The Dressmakers Gift by Fiona Valpy

This book is a real hidden gem. I love fashion, so the idea of a dress that calls down through the years - the midnight blue satin, made of many pieces but with such tiny stitches it appears as if one piece of fabric - really appealed to me. Added to this, my in-laws history of escaping the Warsaw ghetto - at 8 years old in one case, and being sent to Siberia in the other - means I am interested in the threads of family history at a time of turmoil. My late husband’s  family has its own incredible story with repercussions that echo down the generation , so I understand that lives can be displaced and changed beyond recognition, with the results of that still being felt two generations later,

It is Harriet’s love for fashion and an old photograph that leads her to the door of a Paris fashion PR for a year long internship. She is loaned a room in the apartment above the office alongside another girl. Harriet knows this is the very apartment where her grandmother Clare lived in the 1940s. She has left behind a difficult situation!. Having finished university Harriet has been living with her father and stepmother, where she has never felt welcome. Her father sent Harriet to boarding school when he first lived with her stepmom, following her mums death. Her father seemed to find it difficult to cope with a grieving daughter and a burgeoning relationship. One of Harriet’s most treasured possessions is the photo she has of her grandmother Claire and her two best friends in Paris, Mirreile and Vivi. She also has a charm bracelet given by her grandmother and it’s charms show Harriet a story of who her grandmother was. When we are taken back into the past we learn more about these three women. All work in an atelier for the Paris fashion houses. We find out that Claire and Mirreille lived upstairs first, but are later joined by Vivi. All three are great seamstresses and are quick to become friends.

When the Germans arrive in Paris at first is it easy to carry on as normal. Yes, there are more German voices in the cafes and bars, more German vehicles in the streets, but people still order couture clothes. However, as the war really starts to bite things begin to change. The girls friendship survives Claire’s disastrous dalliance with a German officer, but afterwards she notices a difference in her friends. What mysterious work is Vivi doing in the atelier after hours? Who is the gentleman Mirreille is seen with and why is she often missing after curfew? The girls are about to be involved in the war in ways they didn’t imagined; ways that could mean paying the ultimate price.

Just like the stitches in a beautiful garments the threads of history are so beautifully intertwined with the fictional story of the girls. I read Alice Hoffman’s new novel in the last few weeks and it is also set in 1940s Paris so it was interesting to see the same historic events from a different viewpoint. I could see how much research the author had done and her skill in mentioning actual events without them feeling tacked on to the girls story was brilliant, I slowly came to care about each of the girls and although Vivi seems less accessible than the other two at first, it was interesting to see how central to Harriet’s history she becomes.

The detail is often harrowing to read and the idea that trauma can be passed through generations is one I’m familiar with because I’m a therapist and have read the same research as the author. She uses this beautifully in the novel, illustrating that the German’s horrendous acts of cruelty were on such a scale that it echoes down to the next generation. It is only when someone identifies the trauma in their family and gets professional help to let go of it’s effects, that someone can start to heal. I think I expected this book to be lighter and more focused on fashion from the blurb, but what I got was far superior: an incredible story of friendship and survival. I would definitely recommend it to friends.

The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell

As some of you may know, reviews can get very personal for me. Probably because I’m a therapist and used to lots of self-reflection. When a book hits me emotionally I really think about why and this book had me scurrying to my journal. Lisa Jewell is a master of these domestic thrillers and the psychological suspense created when groups of people are in conflict. Here the conflict is controlled within one house 16 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, overlooking the river. That is until it’s secrets explode and the truth of the mystery is scattered across the world.

Three narratives weave in and out of each other to tell the story. We meet twenty five year old Libby with her little garden flat and her job at the kitchen design company where she’s worked for five years. Everything about Libby says organised, professional and quiet. That is until a bombshell is dropped on her life. Woven with this is the story of Lucy - if that is her real name. She is living in France but at the moment we meet her is homeless along with her two children and the dog. The family are reduced to sneaking in to the beach club to get showered but that doesn’t happen everyday. Lucy is at rock bottom. She can’t husk for money but needs money to collect her violin. They have nothing left to sell. Does she go and ask her violent but rich ex-husband for help? Or does she let the children stay with their grandparents? Either way she needs her violin and once she sees the date, she develops an urgent need to make her way back to London and a certain house in Chelsea.

 Our third narrator is Henry, relating what happened at the house back in the early 1990s. Henry just about remembers family life when things were normal and it was just the four of them: mum, dad, Henry and his sister. He has vivid memories of going to private school in his brown knickerbockers and sitting drinking lemonade while his Dad read the newspaper at his club. The house was filled with curiosities such as animal heads, ceremonial swords and red thrones. It’s so distinctive in style that when the money starts to run out the house is scouted as a location for a music video. The fiddle player in the band is Birdie and she loves the house. So much so that when she needs a roof over their head, she and her partner, Justin, come to stay in the upstairs room. Henry’s father has had a stroke and doesn’t have the same strength and power he used to have. He seems to sit by and watch as Birdie and Justin take up residence.

 Later another couple join the group. David Thomsen is a man Henry dislikes almost instantly because he seems to sense what his Dad and Justin fail to see. David has charisma and seems to have an effect on every woman in the house. His wife Sally and two children, Phin and Clemency, also join them. It starts to feel like they’re living in a commune but the only consolation is Phin. To Henry, Phin is beautiful with floppy hair, cheekbones and a distinctive style. When Phin takes him shopping, Henry develops a crush and trails after him, wanting to be like him. When it is suddenly announced at the dinner table that David and Birdie are now a couple Henry senses this is the start of something evil. They bring out the worst elements of each other and start to assume a power in the house that goes unchallenged by his parents or the other adults. They are told what they will eat, do and even wear. Henry knows this is out of control and this is only the beginning of the damage this man will inflict in the house.

Libby has been set a letter by a group of solicitors telling her she has been left a house. When the solicitor walks her round to the house she realises she is rich. The house is abandoned, but huge and in prime position. It could be worth millions. The solicitor also gives her a newspaper cutting describing  the strange events that took place there exactly twenty five years before. Libby has always known she was adopted, but this tells her she was the lone survivor in the house, tucked in her cot with a lucky rabbits foot under the mattress. Downstairs were three people, dressed all in black and dead from poisoning themselves with belladonna. One was David Thomsen. The news story talks of a cult forming within the house and aside from Libby, whose real name is Serenity, all the children living at the house were  missing. Libby feels there is more to this story and wants to meet the journalist who wrote the article. What is the answer to how this happened? And who is sneaking in and out of the attic space at the house?

There are so many questions that I won’t answer for fear of ruining the book, but I will tell you about the effect it had on me. When I was 12, the same age as Henry, my parents joined an evangelical church that became all-consuming and took over our lives for a few years. Up until then we’d been part-time Catholic’s and I’d gone to Catholic school for a while through my first confession and communion. These new people felt weird. They were so fervent and all that speaking in tongues was odd. But it got worse. My parents started to have no other social life from church. We were forced into church activities for kids. My dad lit a bonfire and they burned their secular music and all of my mum’s ‘inappropriate ‘ books like the Judith Krantz and Jackie Collins novels. I was scared by this. I started to wonder who my parents were as I was more restricted on what I wore, listened to and read. I couldn’t go to anything where there was a sniff of boys and from what I could see there was a lot of coercive control over women and girls particularly. I felt Henry’s fear when reading this book. I know what it feels to be a kid, looking at your parents and thinking they’ve been taken in by something dangerous. That beliefs are being forced on you and you can’t live like other kids. To feel like all of your security is being taken away. 

Of course my solution wasn’t as dramatic as Henry’s but I did have to create coping mechanisms. There are times now when we can laugh about it, because as my brother and I have grown older we have become one of those families that openly discuss everything. However, I still occasionally have dreams where my parents can’t see or hear me and I think it has also bred a lifelong mistrust of authority. So I can understand the seismic effect the arrival of Dave Thomsen had on these children, with repercussions way into adult life. Whether it’s changing who you are to escape, or bouncing from one failed relationship to another or being unable to move on, even geographically, they are all responses to trauma. With a brief nod to the future at the end of the book the author does leave a tiny seed of hope that in future generations a type of healing can be reached. This is a dark, disturbing, look at how sometimes home is the most dangerous place to be. 

Unprotected by Sophie Jonas Hill

This is a very personal response because I’m not sure I expected the visceral power of this book. Even though it was billed as raw and honest, I didn’t expect to feel emotionally wrung out by this character’s experiences. In a strange parallel I am currently writing about my experiences of recurrent miscarriage for the memoir portfolio of my MA and it could have been that these memories were at the forefront of my mind as I read. Lydia our protagonist, is a tattoo artist and as the book opens is going through her fifth miscarriage. She and Max are exhausted and raw, but instead of coming together in their grief, it blows them apart. More used to helping others, than accepting help, Lydia tries to avoid what has happened rather than face it.

Sometimes, when we try to avoid feelings that make us uncomfortable we show a ‘covering feeling’ instead. In Lydia’s case she is uncomfortable allowing herself to feel the pain and sadness of loss, for her babies and her relationship, so she acts out from anger instead. She goes on a wild night out, drinks and tries different drugs. The next morning she wakes up next to a much younger man. Instead of being an uplifting new beginning, he brings even more complications into her life just as she’s struggling to keep her head above water..Can she put this down as a one night fling or is she about to become more involved with this unstable young man than she should?  In what seems to be another avoidance tactic, Lydia develops an obsession with a young teenage tearaway of a girl she often sees from her apartment window. She desperately wants to help, but with all the pain she’s storing up, does she have room to take on someone other people’s problems?

This a searingly honest portrayal of love and loss. I recognise the powerlessness of miscarriage; the knowledge that whatever  you do nothing can stop it from happening. It feels life changing, but yet nobody else can see or know what is happening. I recognise the fear that this will never happen. The frustration that something other women can do without even thinking about it, or even wanting it, is not possible for you. Something stops you fulfilling the most natural function of being a woman - bringing new life into the world. You feel that something is missing from you, Something that makes you a real woman.

There is also the worry that physically your body can’t take much more. Or that mentally you simply don’t have the capacity to hold that amount of grief. The pull between trying just once more and drawing a line to save your sanity is constant. Just once more might work, but what if it doesn’t? Do I have the ability to keep holding it together? I also split from my partner at the time because I felt changed beyond recognition and I couldn’t see him grieving. He simply seemed to carry on regardless, whereas I locked myself in the bathroom to cry for hours at a time.  It’s also no coincidence that after three miscarriages, I ended up with three cats. The urge that Lydia has to turn her pain into helping someone else is understandable. It’s turning her thwarted maternal instinct into something positive. The bravery of taking that risk shows how strong Lydia is and how she is able to find hope, even after everything she’s gone through.

For me, this was sometimes a painful read. However, as a multiple miscarriage patient I really appreciated the honesty in writing about the subject. Especially since it wasn’t sugar coated or wrapped within a happily ever after love story. The pain is written across every page and I found it deeply moving and above all, real.

Lies, Lies, Lies by Adele Parks

There’s a line in the book where our main character Daisy is the victim of a terrible crime and she makes the contradictory observation that it lasted forever, but was over in a moment. This could sum up my experience reading this book; the first part seemed to take forever with very little happening but then all at once it raced towards a conclusion I didn’t expect. Brilliant at the last minute reveal, Adele Parks saves a lot for the last half of the book and although I’d guessed one of the lies in the title there were others that really caught me off guard.

Daisy and Simon live in London, with their six year old daughter Millie and a close knit group of friends mainly formed from Daisy’s friends at university. They are soulmates. Where Park describes their early relationship I could see exactly the type of couple they started out as. They never stopped talking, to the extent of staying up late at night or even waking in the early hours finding they still had something to discuss. This reminded me of my partner of two years, because we’d recently been approached by a waitress three times in a restaurant only to realise we still hadn’t looked at the menu, because we were talking. Simon and Daisy would sometimes be hoarse from the hours spent wrapped up in conversation each other. At the start of the novel though, this relationship has become more fraught. After several years trying to conceive and going through IVF they finally had their daughter naturally. It took its toll on their relationship and now they’re slightly out of step with each other. Simon would like Millie to have a sibling but Daisy seems unsure. However, she has agreed to see a fertility specialist and unbeknownst to her Simon has decided to ease the process by going for a few tests himself to explore the problem before Daisy has to go undergo any more invasive procedures. They know his sperm count is low with poor motility but nothing can prepare Simon for the bombshell he is about to hear. Stepping in to the doctor’s office alone, while Daisy stays with their daughter, he is told that scientific advances mean tests are now much more accurate. Simon’s sperm count isn’t just low. It is non-existent. It always has been. While Simon struggles to comprehend what this means the doctor makes a suggestion. Maybe they could try donor sperm ‘like last time’. As the minutes tick by Simon can only come to one conclusion. Millie is not his biological daughter. Daisy has been lying to him for six years.

Unaware of what has passed, Daisy carries on with life as normal. Although she does notice a change in Simon. He has always liked a drink and she is aware that, as most of their gang slowed down after university, Simon never did. She has been embarrassed by neighbours thinking they’ve had a party as she puts out the empties for recycling. She knows he drinks and tends to use the term ‘functioning alcoholic’. Of late though, he has seemed a straightforward alcoholic. One night he is brought home by her friends husband Luke and she has to have help cleaning him up and putting him to bed. He has lost control of his bladder, fallen over, and arrives late to Millie’s ballet recital interrupting the performance by banging doors and swearing loudly. Daisy is aware that people are starting to talk, Luckily, Millie's head is full of floating pink ballerinas and dancing is all she wants to do, Daisy is sure she hasn’t noticed anything different about Daddy. One night, at their close friend Connie’s party everything comes to a head and their comfortable happy world explodes. At the party Daisy finds Simon in the front garden drinking with an old university acquaintance called Darryl, Daryl has been working abroad for a few years so they haven’t seen each other, but he is his usual charming, confident and flirty self. I immediately sensed Daisy’s mood change around this man. She becomes quiet, almost passive, and tries to avoid his conversation. She doesn’t want him near Simon. Simon is so drunk that he stumbles in the hall and breaks a beautiful antique lamp which is one of the host’s family heirlooms. In the chaos that follows Daisy takes the opportunity to leave. Simon is antagonistic and Daisy is baffled. She doesn’t know what, apart from the drink, is causing his mood. She’s grateful that Millie is staying across the road with a friend for a sleepover so she can get Simon to bed without  her seeing. When they stop at a garage, Simon becomes more agitated and begins to question Millie’s parentage. He keeps talking about her being blonde and seems convinced her real father must be their friend Luke. Daisy is horrified when he pulls the keys out of her hands and insists on driving. She eventually acquiesces knowing they are only minutes from home, but as they turn into their street distracted by their argument and the loud dance track Simon has chosen on the stereo, they don’t see the little figure in the road until it’s too late.

The second half of the book, which moves much quicker, is set three years later and we see where everybody is now, after the events of that fateful night. The repercussions of that night have rippled out to friends and family so everyone is affected in some way. This is where more twists and turns are revealed very cleverly. Although I thought I had the answer to one of the questions brought up, Millie’s parentage, I was sure I had it worked out but a final page twist turned that on its head. There was another huge twist that made me go back to the original night and reread the account of that car journey. The pace kept me reading on, unable to put the book away until everything is resolved. I also liked that our main protagonists aren’t perfect. We see Simon’s weaknesses front and centre but Daisy is more of a closed book and it takes a long time to see her true character. One friend describes her as judgy and passive-aggressive. I did find myself annoyed with her at times, when I was so desperate for her to say something and help herself! I find her passivity, particularly where Daryll is concerned very frustrating too although I do understand it more by the end of the novel. More than once Parks describes her words as pious and this is how she comes across. I loved the way that One character, Lucy, comes unexpectedly to the fore towards the end of the book, surprising Daisy and teaching her a lesson. Lucy was friends with Daisy, her sister Rose, and classmate Connie at university but has fallen out of favour more recently, particularly with Daisy who has held a grudge for fifteen years. Lucy had an affair with Rose’s first husband Peter and even though everyone else has moved on and accepted they’re a couple,( even Rose) Daisy still sees Lucy as a home wrecker. So she is surprised that it is Lucy who forces her to accept help when she really needs it, supporting both Daisy and Simon as each tries to pick up the pieces of their lives. Help often comes from the most unexpected of places and I like that Daisy has to question her assumptions and prejudice.

This is again a book I can’t go into more detail on, because I don’t want to ruin all the twists. Suffice to say that after a quiet start the story really does grab hold of you and beg to be finished in one sitting. The novel asks questions about our relationships and what we are able to forgive and move on. When Lucy asks if Daisy and Simon can resume their relationship and forgive, Daisy replies ‘but he’s an alcoholic’. Quick as a flash Lucy replies ‘people love alcoholics’. It’s a lesson in how we love, despite each other’s imperfections. That love can have the power to heal even the worst wounds. It asks us to consider parental love too and how far we would go to protect our children. When Simon finds out that Millie can’t be his biological daughter, his mind is catapulted back to the day she is born and the following days as Daisy seems to develop post-natal depression and he is Millie’s primary care giver. He describes holding her and the smell of clean, warm baby intoxicating him. It’s a love like no other, he remembers, somehow more pure than any other love and without conditions. It’s this love that makes Simon her father, whatever biology has to say. This was a thrilling, addictive read with something meaningful to say about our human connections. More than that, it shows how one lie leads to another until you’re caught in a web that’s impossible to escape.