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A review by karieh13
The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell
4.0
“The Hand that First Held Mine”. It feels as if a hand has taken yours as you start reading. As if you are being gently led into a new world. You are directed where to look, introduced to people as they enter the story. Given help as you adjust to this new place...are birthed into this book.
I liked this narrative tool – like the scene direction that the reader is given by the author. It gives a certain texture to the words that made the actions even more visual, a movie that unfolds before us...or rewinds in front of our eyes.
“But this is anticipating. The film needs to be rewound a little. Watch. Innes sucks in a nimbus of smoke, lifts a cigarette stub from the ashtray, he appears to envelop Lexie in a shirt and push her across the room, the pillows jump onto the bed, Lexie zooms backwards towards the window.”
I was a bit unsure where this book was going...who the focus of the book would be. What the focus would be. Was this a story about the cataclysmic change that happens as one becomes a mother? Was this a story about madness? Were we being brought slowly behind the scenes of a mystery? Or was it a story about parents and children and that special kind of love?
“Elina and the baby walk together to the window. They don't take their eyes off each other. He blinks a little in the bright light but stared up at her, as if the sight of her to him is like water to a plant. Elina leans against the windows to the garden. She raises the baby so that his forehead touches her cheek, as if anointing him or greeting him, as if thy are starting all the way back at the beginning.”
I was enjoying the story, I was interested in the characters...but I wasn't engrossed in the book. And then...I put it down for a week. I read two other books...and then came back to “The Hand that First Held Mine”...and I was hooked. Something about the story had changed, or I'd been wondering about the characters...and I inhaled the last third of the book.
Something about this story of couples and parents in two different time periods but in the same places had worked on my imagination. I had to know what happened...both in the future and in the past. I'd grown accustomed to the rhythm of their lives and the scenery of their world and had to have more.
“He feels for a moment the vastness of the city, the whole breathing breadth of it and he feels as if he and this girl, this woman, are sitting together in its very centre, at the very eye of its storm, and he feels as if they might be the only people who are doing this, who have ever done this.”
I can't explain what grabbed me at the end of this book, I can only say that I almost couldn't turn the pages fast enough. I had to know how all of these lives tied into one another...what might have happened in one character's past to determine another character's future. I had to experience what they did...yet in some cases I already had.
“So, she thinks to herself, no walk for you today. And she must sit here for however long he sleeps. Which isn't the worst thing in the world, is it? But for a moment it seems to Elina that it is. She has such an urge, such an ache to go out, to see something other than the interior walls of this house, to apprehend the world, to move about in it. Sometimes she finds herself eying Ted when he has come in from work, when the life of the city still seems to cling to him. She sometimes wants to stand near to him, to sniff him, to catch the scent of it. She wants, desperately, to be somewhere else – anywhere else.”
Ulitmately, I think this story is about the ferocity of love. Specifically the love between a mother and a child. The bond that exists between them – an invisible, nearly unbreakable bond. A bond that is magical, and terrifying and inexplicable. There is beauty in this story, beauty in words and action and descriptions. But none was more beautiful for me than the story about that bond.
“The women we become after children...We lose muscle tone, sleep, reason, perspective. Our hearts begin to live outside our bodies. They breathe, they eat, they crawl and – look! - they walk, they begin to speak to us. We learn that we must sometimes walk an inch at a time, to stop and examine every stick, every stone, every squished can along the way. We get used to not getting where we were going...We get used to living with a love that suffuses us, suffocates us, blinds us, controls us. We live.”
I liked this narrative tool – like the scene direction that the reader is given by the author. It gives a certain texture to the words that made the actions even more visual, a movie that unfolds before us...or rewinds in front of our eyes.
“But this is anticipating. The film needs to be rewound a little. Watch. Innes sucks in a nimbus of smoke, lifts a cigarette stub from the ashtray, he appears to envelop Lexie in a shirt and push her across the room, the pillows jump onto the bed, Lexie zooms backwards towards the window.”
I was a bit unsure where this book was going...who the focus of the book would be. What the focus would be. Was this a story about the cataclysmic change that happens as one becomes a mother? Was this a story about madness? Were we being brought slowly behind the scenes of a mystery? Or was it a story about parents and children and that special kind of love?
“Elina and the baby walk together to the window. They don't take their eyes off each other. He blinks a little in the bright light but stared up at her, as if the sight of her to him is like water to a plant. Elina leans against the windows to the garden. She raises the baby so that his forehead touches her cheek, as if anointing him or greeting him, as if thy are starting all the way back at the beginning.”
I was enjoying the story, I was interested in the characters...but I wasn't engrossed in the book. And then...I put it down for a week. I read two other books...and then came back to “The Hand that First Held Mine”...and I was hooked. Something about the story had changed, or I'd been wondering about the characters...and I inhaled the last third of the book.
Something about this story of couples and parents in two different time periods but in the same places had worked on my imagination. I had to know what happened...both in the future and in the past. I'd grown accustomed to the rhythm of their lives and the scenery of their world and had to have more.
“He feels for a moment the vastness of the city, the whole breathing breadth of it and he feels as if he and this girl, this woman, are sitting together in its very centre, at the very eye of its storm, and he feels as if they might be the only people who are doing this, who have ever done this.”
I can't explain what grabbed me at the end of this book, I can only say that I almost couldn't turn the pages fast enough. I had to know how all of these lives tied into one another...what might have happened in one character's past to determine another character's future. I had to experience what they did...yet in some cases I already had.
“So, she thinks to herself, no walk for you today. And she must sit here for however long he sleeps. Which isn't the worst thing in the world, is it? But for a moment it seems to Elina that it is. She has such an urge, such an ache to go out, to see something other than the interior walls of this house, to apprehend the world, to move about in it. Sometimes she finds herself eying Ted when he has come in from work, when the life of the city still seems to cling to him. She sometimes wants to stand near to him, to sniff him, to catch the scent of it. She wants, desperately, to be somewhere else – anywhere else.”
Ulitmately, I think this story is about the ferocity of love. Specifically the love between a mother and a child. The bond that exists between them – an invisible, nearly unbreakable bond. A bond that is magical, and terrifying and inexplicable. There is beauty in this story, beauty in words and action and descriptions. But none was more beautiful for me than the story about that bond.
“The women we become after children...We lose muscle tone, sleep, reason, perspective. Our hearts begin to live outside our bodies. They breathe, they eat, they crawl and – look! - they walk, they begin to speak to us. We learn that we must sometimes walk an inch at a time, to stop and examine every stick, every stone, every squished can along the way. We get used to not getting where we were going...We get used to living with a love that suffuses us, suffocates us, blinds us, controls us. We live.”