But no one knows that and that does not matter.) I took myself – secretly, secretly – very seriously! I knew I was a writer. Even when I met my husband I didn’t tell him right away.

And I thought: I will write and people will not feel so alone! (But it was my secret. And then later in high school I still read books, when my homework was done, in the warm school. My teacher saw that I loved reading, and she gave me books, even grown-up books, and I read them. Now I have to say that I am not a fan of novels about novelists, so many clichés, however as with Graham Swift’s recent Mothering Sunday, this won me round as it isn’t the focus of the book, rather another layer. It could also be seen as a novel of a women’s journey to becoming a writer, what inspired her and what compelled her from a young age (mainly escapism through books). It is also much more than that as Lucy’s mother’s random appearance brings back many memories and stories of her youth, many of which are unsettling rather than happy. “I haven’t had any dreams.”Īfter an initial read of the book, which at a compact 200 pages can be done in one sitting, it would be easy to simply say this was a concentrated and heightened fable of the relationship between a mother and daughter. “I think you’ll be alright,” she added, in the same shy-soundingbut urgent voice. “Oh, I got on an airplane.” She wiggled her fingers, and I knew that there was too much emotion, for us. I had not seen my mother for years, and I kept staring at her I could not figure out why she looked so different. She leaned forward and squeezed my foot through the sheet. This is something that Lucy finds wonderful, baffling, terrifying, thrilling and worrying, how do these two women relate to each other after so many years apart and after so much has gone unsaid? Penguin Books, 2016, hardback, fiction, 206 pages, kindly sent by the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for FictionĪfter a slow recovery from what should have been a relatively simple operation and recuperation Lucy Barton wakes one night to find her mother, who she has not seen for years, sat at the end of her bed.

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