Shortlisted for
Book of the Month
A #DDRevs Diamond Read
 |
| Canadian Cover |
Family Drama
20th
Century
Rhode Island
I’m not sure
what I expected when I started this novel. It sounded interesting from the
synopsis but that told so little of what I was to find here.
It is three
separate stories that intertwine, that of Ben (who also calls himself Leo),
Lucy and Clare, and only Lucy and Ben appear to have any connection. Ben, a six-year-old, comes across Lucy in her professional capacity as a trauma doctor at
the local hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. Clare, meanwhile, is in very
advanced years in a care home and there seems no way she can possibly share
anything with or have any connection to either of the others. And yet it
gradually becomes clear how these three people of different ages and
backgrounds have a common thread. Sweeping through the twentieth century from the
Great Depression through the Vietnam war, this novel strikes beyond the narrow
lives of a town in America's smallest state.
These three
stories are each in their own way tragic but they cover different levels of
tragedy, from the more mundane, more everyday tragedy of divorce, to acts of
God and war which are no more in the open or revealed than the internal pain of
being separated from a loved one.
Through tragedy
there is acknowledgement of loss, and telling the story of those who can no
longer speak for themselves are all at the heart of this novel. If no one knows
your name, do you still exist? is a central theme. If no one knows of the
tragedy, did it occur?
A more positive
and happier message comes through these tales, and that is that families are
not always those that we are born to, that a family can be close and loving and
yet the parent and the child do not belong by blood, but by choice. Traditional
families in this novel don't work, and yet those that form through accident or
circumstance fare far better and are a confirmation of love.
Few books of
any kind make me cry these days, I read too much, too analytically, but by the
end of this novel I was weeping. From the opening touching scene of a shy boy
at a kid’s party, to the end, the detail of the description makes these
characters so very vivid that you care enough for each of them that it brings
you to tears when it ends.
© Nicky
Galliers
click here to
return to home page 'Bookshelf' then scroll down for more items of interest
No comments:
Post a Comment
We do not accept comments. If you need to contact Discovering Diamonds go to the CONTACT facility
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.