The Hand That First Held Mine
Maggie O'Farrell
A spellbinding novel of two women connected across fifty years by art, love, betrayals, secrets, and motherhood. 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 wears duck-egg blue ties and 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. She creates many lives--all of them unconventional. 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 doesn't recognize herself: 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. Here Maggie O'Farrell brings us a spellbinding novel of two women connected across fifty years by art, love, betrayals, secrets, and motherhood. Like her acclaimed The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, it is a "breathtaking, heart-breaking creation." (The Washington Post Book World) and it is a gorgeous inquiry into the ways we make and unmake our lives, who we know ourselves to be, and how even our most accidental legacies connect us.
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You know when a book sweeps you in and envelopes your day and won’t let you go until it is over? This book did that for me and I could not be more impressed with the author’s beautiful prose, the pacing of the book, or what a gift Maggie O’Farrell has for character development and the art of intertwining two beautiful stories into one.
The book opens with the stunning Lexie Sinclair, a rebellious young woman, and a chance meeting for her and a very sophisticated man named Innes Kent. It is in the post-WWII era, a time when such spirited youthfulness is frowned upon, but Lexie is ready to start a new life in London and she begins her new life with Innes. What begins between them starts a very unlikely love story that is vividly captured with O’Farrell’s words. Innes quickly takes her under his wing and not only loves her, but guides her into a journalism career that Lexie had never thought to explore.
In the next chapter, you are introduced to Elina and her boyfriend Ted and it is fifty years later. They have just brought home their baby boy, never realizing how different both of their lives will be. Elina, who suffered from a difficult delivery, is learning what a challenging role motherhood can be, while Ted grows more and more distant from Elina and the baby. Ted is suddenly having snippets of memories that he can’t recall and the baby forces to light a shadowed past that he did not know he possessed.
It is a book that builds and builds upon these stories and the chapters suddenly twist together and you find out how these stories are interwoven. It took me by surprise how they would weave together and throughout most of the book, you are trying to discover just what it is that brings these two stories together. I hate to say more than that, for fear of giving away the experience of discovery for yourself!
The book’s prose is so visual and almost cinematic in the way the story is told. In some scenes, it feels as though you are reading a script as the characters, setting, and mood are described in vivid detail. It is because of the writing style that I look forward to reading more of O’Farrell’s. This book was a fantastic and fast-paced read- add it to your reading list today!
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