A disturbing read in many respects and one that made me feel thankful for having a Dad that put my wellbeing uppermost alongside mutual respect.
A moving and utterly believable story of damage and betrayal that absorbed me to the end, even though I experienced a wading through feeling during the first part of the book. I had to see it through though.
This novel tells how (Father-of-one) Charles Redfern is knocked off his bicycle and lapses into a coma leaving his wife and daughter to confront their relationships with him as well as with each other.
Charles wife, Ann is subjected to psychological abuse and adultery, once married and stores all her disillusionment inside her.
Their daughter Charlotte is the vehicle for some of his fantacies, but at the time of these episodes she is too young to realise what is actually happening or what is acceptable behaviour.
There is an icy remoteness from Ann as a way of dealing with the many trappings laid by her husband and a hidden cry for help from her daughter that is not voiced until her Father finds himself in a motionless state.
Damage wihin a marriage and family is always hard to read and to think this goes on and what those people choose to endure is horrific.
You can see vividly, that the daughter aught to have said something sooner and that her Mother should have challenged her husband or left him instead of quietly observing. Ann was living in the knowledge of his deceipt in fear of the consequences of confronting him. When Ann knew of what was happening with her daughter, she still made a choice to stay quiet in her efforts to remain in the security of a marriage at a huge and defastating cost.
A deep storyline that includes believable misery.
I score this novel 7 (10 is top) in that I will not read this again or any book remotely like it although it is well written.
A book closed for good!
