Book info

• Title Oh Dear Silvia
• Author Dawn French
• Year 2012
• Genre Contemporary

Everyone knows the real Silvia, don't they? Silvia Shute lies in hospital in a coma. Family and friends gather at her bedside, each thinking they know the real Silvia. But do they? For Silvia hides a secret. One she can never tell. And as her visitors congregate, so the truth about Silvia is slowly revealed. Again, and again and again...

Thoughts

I quite enjoyed Dawn French’s first book about a family working through some drama, told from various points of view and in very different voices. Oh Dear Silvia takes a similar form - each chapter from the point of view of a different character - but the story is vastly different. Anchored around the hospital bedside of Silvia, who is in a coma after falling from a balcony, the characters talk to her, tell their tales, and gradually the story comes together.

In all honesty, it was a bit slow-paced for me. I found the dialogue chapters particularly hard to read, as each sentence had to be read at least twice to make sure it said what my brain thought it said. The overall story was pretty depressing, how a family falls apart, but I guess there was some light at the end of the tunnel.

It was a good idea, and handled quite well, particularly the more sensitive points of nursing and death, but it just didn’t quite hang together as I might have hoped.

Rating: 2 / 5