What is this about?: A woman goes in search of her father in the aftermath of her mother’s death.
What else is this about?: No clue. 11 chapters in I was too bored to continue.
Stars: DNF. I’ll review the 11 chapters and why I nixed continuing.
Blurb: What do you do when you find out that your whole life could be a lie?
I talked to my mother the night she dies, losing myself in memories of when we were happiest together. But I held one memory back and it surfaces now, unbidden. I see a green postbox and a small hand stretching up to its oblong mouth. I am never sure whether that small hand is mine. But if not mine, whose?
Louise Redmond left Ireland for London before she was twenty. Now, more than two decades later, her heart already breaking from a failing marriage, she is summoned home. Her mother is on her deathbed, and it is Louise’s last chance to learn the whereabouts of a father she never knew.
Stubborn to the end, Marjorie refuses to fill in the pieces of her daughter’s fragmented past. Then Louise unexpectedly finds a lead. A man called David Prescott . . . but is he really the father she’s been trying to find? And who is the mysterious little girl who appears so often in her dreams? As each new piece of the puzzle leads to another question, Louise begins to suspect that the memories she most treasures could be a delicate web of lies.
Where to begin?
Sighs. Ok. We meet Louise in the aftermath of her mother’s death. As the book continues, it becomes clear that for the longest time, it’s been Louise and her mother against the world. Marjorie eventually marries and they’re happy as they can be and life happens — Louise marries and moves to London, and stops asking her mother about her father.
The author explains quite well that Louise wanted to have a family, that the search for a father and her desire for a sibling was a big part of her longing in her childhood, and it works towards explaining why her search for her father is so important to her.
I should have twigged this might not be my cup of tea when the author described an agricultural looking woman. Pardon me, told readers that an agricultural looking woman walked out of a farm house. What is an agricultural looking woman? What does she look like? I would have thought being on a farm and walking out of a farm house would be enough to show readers she’s you know, a farmer’s wife.
So, 11 chapters later, and only the barest slivers of the search has begun. There’s a wealth of time devoted to creating a picture of Louise’s life in London, when 11 chapters in (this could change later) she’s back in Ireland searching. Why, WHY did she just not stay in Ireland and search for her father and angst and ANGST about her broken marriage there?
The broken marriage itself looms large in Louise’s life in these chapters, and it’s the feel of a long-term impact on her psyche which I thought would affect her later… except, her husband comes back to her and the chapters of angsting were for no reason.
There’s so much that could have been sharper or cut out to make this a better, more interesting beginning… but 11 chapters. That’s it for me. I have better books to read, thanks.
Pacing, right? Or am I being too harsh? Goodreads does promise it’s filled with twisty goodness…has anyone read this?
