The Hand That First Held Mine
The Award-Winning Sunday Times Bestseller from the Author of Hamnet
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4.2 • 239 Ratings
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
The Sunday Times top 10 bestselling novel from the author of HAMNET and THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT
*Over 400,000 copies sold*
Winner of the 2010 Costa Novel Award
'Exquisitely sensual' Emma Donoghue, author of Room
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Fresh out of university and in disgrace, Lexie Sinclair is waiting for life to begin. When the sophisticated Innes Kent turns up on her doorstep in rural Devon, she realises she can wait no longer, and leaves for London. There, Lexie carves out a new life for herself at the heart of bohemian 1950s Soho, with Innes by her side.
In the present, Ted and Elina no longer recognise their lives after the arrival of their first child. Elina, an artist, wonders if she will ever paint again, while Ted is disturbed by memories of his own childhood - memories that don't tally with his parents' version of events.
As Ted's search for answers gathers momentum, so a portrait is revealed of two women separated by fifty years, but linked by their passionate refusal to settle for ordinary lives.
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'The journey this novel invites us on is wonderful, involving time travel, heart ache, elation, confusion, freedom, nostalgia and art' Scotland on Sunday
'A skilful, hurtful writer, capable of imbuing the everyday with weight and colour, ridiculously pleasurable to read' Guardian
'Genuinely unputdownable' Literary Review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
O Farrell (TheVanishing Act of Esme Lennox) interweaves two seemingly unconnected stories that of Lexie Sinclair, living in post-WWII London, and Elina Vilkuna, a denizen of present-day London. Lexie is a rebellious 21-year-old, and when she meets handsome and sophisticated Innes Kent, she realizes he s the one who can help her find the adventure and excitement she craves. Their affair coincides with her moving up in the ranks at the magazine he edits, but a tragedy changes Lexie s life forever. Fifty-odd years later, Elina, a painter, faces her own struggles: she recently had a son with her boyfriend, Ted, and, after a rough child-birth, Ted and Elina struggle to recalibrate their relationship as it evolves into parenthood. While O Farrell brings Lexie to life, she does not achieve the same with Elina and Ted, who come across as just another bland couple facing the challenges of having a child. The two plots are, naturally, connected, but the contemporary plot doesn t really get moving until too late in the book. If the contemporary storyline was developed half as well as the historical plot, this would be a wonderful book. As it is, it feels lighter than it should.
Customer Reviews
Well written, complicated, sad, but different...
I don't usually write reviews. I read sporadically when I've got time and always look for something different, new and interesting.
This book is really well written, there is a lot of beautiful details and its very descriptive, so much so that I felt what Soho must have been like in the 50s... I almost put the book down after the start as quite early in the book it confesses that the main character, Lexie, will die young... It was too sad to have this piece of information pre-emptied... But I am glad I didn't, I carried on reading and getting more and more involved into the complexity of character's lives. There is nothing more intriguing and beautiful that people's stories.. However, I feel the book has too much sadness... Even though it tries to offer an open and positive ending...
Beautifully written is spot-on!
I find reviewing anything difficult because I would hate to spoil it. It suffices to say that Maggie O'Farrell writes with such competency that it is almost impossible not to feel Soho on whizz-bang 1950's evening or north London in the hot and tiring present. What stuck me most was how much this book truly defines the term "page turner" as I was halfway through before I knew it! A fantastic read, well worth the money. Can't wait to read more of Maggie's work.
Stunning
A slow burn which turns into one of the best of reads…clever, lyrical & deeply emotional.