Do they know it’s Christmas yet?- Book review

They took a trip back to 1984 and they broke it… that’s the synopsis for James Crookes’s debut novel Do They Know It’s Christmas Yet?, and if that doesn’t spark your interest then nothing will.

Do They Know… tells the story of 30-somethings Tash Summers and her brother James who take a very unintentional trip back in to time to 1984, thanks to a Sinclair C5 time machine they find in their grandad’s shed on Christmas Eve.

Bizarrely Tash and James arrive back in 1984 on the very day Bob Geldof watched the BBC news report which moved him to form Band Aid and record Do They Know It’s Christmas?.

Unfortunately Tash and James’s time machine crash lands on Bob Geldof’s taxi, causing The Boomtown Rats star to be rushed to hospital and miss out on the all important news report which prompted Band Aid.

When James realises what has happened he tries to persuade his sister they need to stay in 1984 to make sure Geldof sees the crucial news report or they will be responsible for the deaths of all the African children he helped save.

But Tash has a five-month-old baby back in 2020 waiting for her and is desperate to get back in the time machine and go home. It’s a tricky one: return home to your own baby, or make sure a million others get fed?

Now remember this is 1984 so you can’t just catch the news on plus-one or on the iPlayer… what follows is a mad dash across London with a borrowed (stolen) VCR player to try and break in to the hospital to show Bob Geldof the news.

However with the man behind Sinclair C5s chasing them to find out how they got their hands on his prototype, and an American heiress kidnapping the jolly group things are never simple in 1984.

The title and the idea behind Do They Know… promises more than the book actually delivers.

But if you fancy some good old 80s nostalgia you could do worse than pick up a copy and find out if history has been rewritten.