Alice is in a coma after being hit by a car. We hear her voice recounting the story of her beloved husband, who died in the London Docklands bombing. Other viewpoints tell the story of three generations of women: Alice’s grandmother, her mother, and Alice and her two sisters. The writing is beautiful – a tribute a praise to love, to the complexity of love, and to grief. The text is magnificent, with lovely English language and slang, humorous moments, as well as tears. There is even an axolotl in the story. Another Maggie O’Farrell novel that I loved.
“An English teacher at school once said to her, ‘Alice, one thing I hope you never find out is that a broken heart hurts physically.’ Nothing she has ever experienced has prepared her for the pain of this. Most of the time her heart feels as though it’s waterlogged and her ribcage, her arms, her back, her temples, her legs all ache in a dull, persistent way: but at times like this the incredulity and the appalling irreversibility of what has happened cripple her with a pain so bad she often doesn’t speak for days.”