The Hand That First Held Mine

Read our review of Maggie O’Farrell’s The Hand That First Held Mine then tell us what you think on the form below for a chance to win a copy of the AWW Cooking School cook book and have your critique printed in The Australian Women’s Weekly books pages.

Two women born 50 years apart are the pivotal characters in this compelling and multi-layered story by award-winning Irish author Maggie O’Farrell, in which the secrets of the past are never escaped completely.

Every very family has secrets that have been swept under the carpet. This beautifully written novel about motherhood, love and jealousy exposes the dangers of papering over unpalatable truths and the devastating impact this can have on generations to come. It is a brilliant novel, subtle and intriguing. Pivotal are two English women born 50 years apart. Their stories unfold in layers that seem to shift and move, so that you can never quite get a handle on the truth.

There is the likeable and feisty Lexie Sinclair, who is battling against the stifling constraints placed on women in the 1950s. Her key to freedom is a chance meeting with the irresistible Innes Kent. The second woman is present-day Elina, struggling through a fog of pain and tiredness after the traumatic birth of her first child, and reading about her state of mind in the early stages is not always a comfortable experience. Ted, Elina’s film editor husband, is feeling dislocated, not only by the high drama surrounding the birth of his son and the stranger his wife has become, but by flashbacks to memories and scenes that don’t tally with his background. As this alluring plot switches back and forth between the two women, there is the feeling that there is a connection – but what is it?

Occasionally, there is a glimmer of what might have really happened, a tiny clue, a flicker of a possibility, but you’re never quite sure and the tension mounts like a rising barometer. Only when there is an astonishing revelation does the final piece of the puzzle fall into place and when it does, it is deeply, richly satisfying – and very, very surprising.