Dunmore’s strength is in pulling together complex stories in a beautifully poetic language style and yet making the reading easily assimilated. The interconnected threads to the story revolve mainly around loss; a girl left in a shoebox at 2 days old, the death of her daughter years later. In order to understand the story of her life and her loss she listens to stories of the lives of friends and family. Sounds rather morbid but there is great depth to the whole novel that will grab you as you read it.
Rebecca was abandoned by her mother in a shoebox at the back of an Italian restaurant when she was just two days old. More than thirty years later she’s built a life for herself – married Adam and had her own, wonderful daughter, Ruby. But when Ruby is involved in an accident, Rebecca’s life tumbles down and she’s forced to face her loss – both as a mother and as a daughter. She reaches out to those around her, listening to the stories of their lives, in an attempt to understand her own…
'Moments that bring the reader to tears...a fascinating - often brilliant - novel'- The Times
'Bold and unusual...miraculously written, Dunmore's drama of loss and regeneration pieces together shattered lives' - Daily Mail
'A tale of unbearable tragedy...prose and plot-lines as taut as hawsers. Dunmore is the most gifted novelist of her generation' - New Statesman
Author
About Helen Dunmore
Helen Dunmore was the author of fourteen novels. Her first, Zennor in Darkness, explored the events which led to D H Lawrence’s expulsion from Cornwall (on suspicion of spying) during the First World War. It won the McKitterick Prize. Her third novel, A Spell of Winter, won the inaugural Orange Prize, now the Baileys Prize for Women’s Fiction. Her bestselling novel The Siege, set during the Siege of Leningrad, was described by Antony Beevor as ‘a world-class novel’ and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year and the Orange Prize.
Helen Dunmore’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages and she was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She died in June 2017.
