OH DEAR SILVIA BY DAWN FRENCH (Michael Joseph £18.99)

Oh Dear Silvia by Dawn French

Oh Dear Silvia’s heroine never speaks, never moves. She is in a coma and visited in her private ward by a succession of family, friends and staff both hospital and household. They perform, in turn, self-revealing bedside monologues to the unconscious patient, each monologue forming a chapter of the book.

A great, neat device, very Talking Heads and indeed it would work brilliantly as a play. As a novel, and despite the skill and wit of the writing, it lacks warmth and this is possibly because Silvia, as revealed through those who come to see her, seems to have been a pretty unsympathetic person.

Among the visitors I found New Age Jo, the sister who smuggles in a dog to try ‘animal therapy’ on her prone sibling, a bit unlikely. But Tia, the sunny-natured Indonesian cleaner who loves celebrity magazines and indiscriminate swearing, is a delight.

For all its humour it’s a pretty bleak scenario, even so. Writing seems to have unleashed the dark side of Dawn French.


Eloise by Judy Finnigan

Another televisual titan takes to the typewriter. Finnigan’s debut novel, set in Cornwall, is a spooky romance in which mentally fragile heroine Cathy is haunted by the ghost of her dead friend Eloise.

Meanwhile, Cathy’s daughter meets a wildly handsome boy who may or may not be Eloise’s descendant. Brooding from afar is Eloise’s malign ex-husband.

This might all sound familiar and indeed it is a little bit ‘Wuthering’, a little bit ‘Rebecca’ but it manages a life of its own thanks to Finnigan’s lack of pretension, light touch and obvious passion for the Cornish landscape which is so lovingly described it’s almost a character in its own right.

A warm and promising debut.


The Winding Road by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

The Eagles has landed - at least in my bookcase. This is the first CHE novel I have read and I enjoyed it immensely.

Cynthia, who sounds like something out of a novel herself (by PG Wodehouse), is a wonderfully deft writer who pulls off, seemingly effortlessly, that trick of combining several dense plot strands simultaneously.

In this instalment of the story of the glamorous Morland family, New York couturier Polly is engaged to the handsome, Presidentially-ambitious Ren Alexander. But why does her cousin engage a private detective to probe his past?

Meanwhile, in London, the Brit end of the family faces the General Strike. Instantly absorbing.