The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell
Fiction
2010
Finished on April 4, 2025
Rating: 3.5/5
Publisher's Blurb:
Lexie Sinclair is plotting an extraordinary life for herself. Hedged in by her parents' genteel country life, she plans her escape to London. There, she takes up with Innes Kent, a magazine editor who introduces her to the thrilling, underground world of bohemian, post-war Soho. She learns to be a reporter, to know art and artists, to embrace her life fully and with a deep love at the center of it. And when she finds herself pregnant, she doesn't hesitate to have the baby on her own.
Later, in present-day London, a young painter named Elina dizzily navigates the first weeks of motherhood. She finds herself walking outside with no shoes; she goes to the restaurant for lunch at nine in the morning; she can't recall the small matter of giving birth. But for her boyfriend, Ted, fatherhood is calling up lost memories, with images he cannot place. As Ted's memories become more disconcerting and more frequent, it seems that something might connect these two stories—these two women—something that becomes all the more heartbreaking and beautiful as they all hurtle toward its revelation.
I have now read five novels by Maggie O'Farrell, with four remaining (plus her memoir) to read over the course of the year. The Hand That First Held Mine is similar in style to her earlier stories (yet significantly different from Hamnet), and it took me a great deal of time before I came to care about any of the characters and their situations as new parents. Elina and Ted both suffer from strange cases of, for lack of a better term, amnesia. Elina has no recollection of giving birth to her son, and Ted has no memory of his childhood. As the novel progresses, I began to understand the reasons for these lapses in memory, as well as the connection between the two narrative threads, which do eventually coalesce. I was frustrated with this story, and might have given up at the halfway mark had I not decided to read all of O'Farrell's books this year. I'm glad I continued, but it's not one that I'd read again.
In viscerally poetic prose, O'Farrell captures 'the utter loneliness' of motherhood and 'the constant undertow of maternal anxiety.' ~ Washington Post
This one sounds tough. Sometimes it's good to power through ... even when things aren't going too well. You are capturing O'Farrell's range of books. And hopefully the next will be better.
ReplyDeleteSusan, it wasn't the most compelling book, but it did pick up toward the end. I am enjoying my "Year With Maggie O'Farrell." :)
DeleteIt's so interesting how we can like earlier (or later) works by a particular author. I am that way with Barbara Kingsolver, much preferring her earlier novels.
ReplyDeleteHelen, I'm that way with some authors, too. Prefer their earlier books, but then in this case, I think her later works are better. Go figure!
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