What She Never Told Me

Kate McQuaile

Hachette Australia

Quercus

ISBN: 9781784296711

 

Description:

What do you do when you find out that your whole life could be a lie?

 

‘I talked to my mother the night she died, losing myself in memories of when we were happiest together. But I held one memory back, and it surfaces now, unbidden. I see a green post box and a small hand stretching up to its oblong mouth. I am never sure whether that small hand is mine. But if not mine, whose?’

 

Louise Redmond left Ireland for London before she was twenty. Now, more than two decades later, her heart already breaking from a failing marriage, she is summoned home. Her mother is on her deathbed, and it is Louise’s last chance to learn the whereabouts of a father she never knew.

 

Stubborn to the end, Marjorie refuses to fill in the pieces of her daughter’s fragmented past. Then Louise unexpectedly finds a lead. A man called David Prescott . . . but is he really the father she’s been trying to find? And who is the mysterious little girl who appears so often in her dreams? As each new piece of the puzzle leads to another question, Louise begins to suspect that the memories she most treasures could be a delicate web of lies.

 

 

My View:

This was a very intense mystery that speaks to the themes of motherhood, family, memory, loss and grief.

So many secrets and lies… so much sadness. The author slowly reveals clues or bits of information or red herrings that have you plotting and planning and trying to solve the mystery, I doubt that you will or at least not till the very end.

 

The author has excelled in drawing the reader into the world of her characters. The opening pages are full of mystery and the images in these pages repeat themselves throughout the novel building the anticipation and expectation of a resolution of the mystery.

 

As you read you will find yourself sighing with sadness at the many disappointments, revelations and lies that fill these lives and pages. Life has thrown many challenges in the path of the main characters, good choices have not always been made, and lives can be changed in an instant.

 

 

You are transported back into the time and places (Ireland 1960’s) when religion and fear dictated women’s choices regarding their sexuality and fertility. The settings, the social structure of society are clear and visual, the characters and their relationships are realistic but always there is a hint of the unreliable narrator that throws questions and misdirection’s in your path.

 

A heartbreaking but enjoyable family drama and mystery. A great debut novel.