This is a book I can really recommend - not just because I like Frances as a person, from what transpires about her through her blog, but because it really is a good book, a good story well told.
The story in itself is not unusual; quite ordinary people live quite ordinary lives, and their lives change by events some of which they have a certain control over, while others simply happen without them contributing actively to them. This ordinariness makes the story and character development very credible; one can imagine to acting in a similar way in the place of the characters (at least I can).
You can read this book either just for entertainment, enjoying the story and wanting to know what will happen next (there is drama, there is romance), or you can accept the lessons taught - never in a school-teacherish manner, but simply by what the characters have to deal and cope with in their lives, in both past and present.
Ernest is the husband of Annie; when we first hear of him in the book, he has just died of a heart attack outside a fish and chip shop (what WAS he doing in front of the chippie? This is one mystery that remains unsolved!).
But we meet him later on as a younger man in the book, when Annie tells the story of her life - which is invariably also the story of her marriage of 60 years) - to Andrew, the vicar who is asked to visit her by her son Billy. In spite of Annie not being a churchgoer or a particularly religious person at all, a friendship develops between her and Andrew, and she starts telling him her story.
Shortly after these regular visits have started, Billy's daughter Ophelia, Annie's only grandchild, comes to see her grandmother, also originally sent there by Billy.
Things between Annie, Andrew and Ophelia turn out rather different from what Billy imagined when he initiated these visits, and the lives of all three of them are changed by what they learn about each other and about themselves.
As I said, nothing in this book is unrealistic. People behave like humans do; Annie does not willingly play the role of grieving widow everybody seems to expect her to be, Ophelia is not her parents' dream-daughter, and Andrew is not quite the man of god he feels he should be.
Currently, I am reading her 2nd novel, and enjoying it just as much, although the two of them are very different in both story and "message".
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- Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2012
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- Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2019
Top reviews from other countries
- fictionreaderReviewed in the United Kingdom on March 4, 2018
Tender, funny, poignant and feels true
- Amazon CustomerReviewed in the United Kingdom on October 20, 2018
Thoroughly enjoyable
