This book is a real page turner, making you hungry to keep going. From the first two chapters you are drawn into the worlds of two similar yet very different women, Hope and Anna. Both of these women are in similar stages of labour, in different rooms in the same hall, and the same ward in a hospital. There are two very different outcomes from the two births of Minnie and Florence. One of the women makes a split one-minute and life changing decision. With that quick decision this woman’s pain is temporarily halted by causing pain in the other woman’s life for a long time. Something that can never be undone, healed fully from and causes much pain to so many.
Dawn’s book is written through two separate timelines. One of the timelines is January 1st 2001 and the days just after that. Then the second timeline is 2017 and 2018 which is the current time when the book is set. There are flashes of information and very short clips of stories here and there, also given from the in between years, over the seventeen years span. The mothers are both extremely maternal whilst the fathers are completely different from each other, in every way humanly possible. Isaac is extremely paternal from the get go, with much love to give and protective and loyal. Yet Julius on the other hand is a selfish git, full of himself and not fit to be a father or a husband and doesn’t know what the word loyalty means.
Fast forward 17 years and the full truth of a brief life altering decision by a desperate woman, a desperate heartbroken mother in pain is confessed. We see the devastating destruction and turmoil that this decision caused, and how it all escalated for such a long time. The full truth of what happened in a hospital room almost two decades earlier, are finally put out in the open. We see how the decision altered the lives of five different prominent people and so many others, and then how when the truth is exposed alters these people’s lives even further, both literally and emotionally.
A great read for anyone who likes fictional family dramas. There is love, there is hate, there is loss, there is gain, there are laughs, there are tears, there is sacrifice, there is forgiveness, and there is so much more. Published by MICHAEL JOSEPH part of the Penguin Random House Group and first published by Penguin Random House UK in 2020. The beautiful quirky yet simple cover illustration was done by Ryan McAmis.
I know the author best as the comedian vicar in the well-loved BBC drama ‘The Vicar of Dibley’. While there are a few comical moments, most of the book is serious and pulled at my heartstrings. The character Thripshaw made me laugh with his jumbled-up phrases. There is one scene where he tells Julius what as ass he is, and I wet myself laughing,
“Well, Mr Lindon-Clarke, that went well, didn’t it? Truly, I’ve met some pricks in my time, but you sir, are the full cactus.”
I will definitely be reading some of Dawn French’s other novels. Her previous titles are:
Me. You. A Diary
According to Yes
Oh, Dear Sylvia
A Tiny Bit Marvellous
Dear Fatty
(c) Grace O’Reilly
Order your copy online here.
