I normally love Esther Freud's writing - she's up there as one of my favourite authors - but this book was so poor compared to her other novels.

I don't know if her publishers put the squeeze on her or something, but this is such a mass market read with a cliched storyline centred around a woman forced into an Irish convent for unmarried mothers and the impact on her mother's and daughter's lives. There were none of the hallmarks of Freud's usual turn of phrase, and the storyline was horribly confused - halfway through and I still wasn't sure who was who, and from the reviews on Amazon I wasn't the only one.

2.5 stars - hugely disappointing. I hope this is not the kind of writing we're going to see from Freud going forward. ( )

This is a tender and heart-rending tale that follows three generations of mothers and daughters from 1939 to 1991. Their sorrow from their loss of contact with their daughters is delicately and movingly revealed as their stories unfold in alternating chapters following Aoife, her daughter Rosaleen and in turn, her daughter Kate. But the love is not only shared between the daughters, as there are some men in their lives who play key roles in giving them help at crucial times. The stories moves from Ireland to London and then to Sussex and the lives and regrets of the three are hauntingly described in Esther Freud’s deeply enchanting and compelling writing, which reverberates long after the final page is turned.

This was so disjointed that I really couldn't get into the plot although it did have potential. Chapters not only switched in time frame, but between main characters, and new characters would just suddenly appear without any background (sometimes that would come and sometimes I wondered "who was that.")

Aoife Kelly's oldest daughter Rosaleen, disappears from Ireland looking for more excitement. She soon has an affair with an older man, a sculptor named Felix. She becomes pregnant and is taken to a horrible Catholic home for unwed mothers where she must work and her baby is taken from her. The "baby" Kate is adopted into a loving family but she is always wondering about her real mother. Kate is married to an alcoholic and is attempting to raise her daughter. This story of three generations of women all searching for their daughters or mothers could have been so much better, but characters either seemed all good or all bad and the plot was told in such a rambling way. ( )

Beautifully written intertwined stories of the lives of in Ireland, each of whom struggles with men, family and pregnancy. ( )

This novel entwines the stories of three Irish women living in London. Aoife leaves rural Ireland for London in the forties, and meets a pub owner who only wants to return and run a farm. They persevere and save through the war and its aftermath, sending their daughters to the safety of an Irish boarding school. Rosaleen flees to London in the sixties, falling deeply in love with a much older Jewish artist. And then there's Kate, also an artist, but forced to put her own ambitions on hold as her daughter is young and her partner prioritizes his music and his drinking over childcare.

At first, the book feels like three unconnected stories woven together, but Freud slowly reveals connections and parallels that unify the novel. The novel looks at the choices that women have been allowed to make over the years and how those choices, or lack of choice, form them. Freud is such a fine writer and has so fully developed each of her three protagonists, that I never felt frustrated when the novel switched from one to another. As each woman's story is told, it deepens the other stories as well, and in the end, all was pulled together into a single cohesive whole. I was impressed with Freud's writing and her skill in both telling a story and how well she developed her characters. I'll certainly be reading more by this author. ( )