Maggie O’Farrell
The Hand that First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell rotates between two separate timelines, decades apart, that are seemingly unconnected but which overlap at the end of the novel when the past sneaks up into the present.
The first timeline occurs in the late 1950s when Lexie Sinclair leaves her cloistered Devonshire home to make a life for herself in London. She falls in love with a dashing magazine editor, Innes Kent. She moves in with him and works at his magazine where she hones her skills as a journalist, is exposed to art, artists, writers, Soho nightclubs, and travel.
The second timeline occurs decades later in the present day. Elina, a successful artist, has narrowly escaped bleeding to death in a complicated C-section. Still woozy and confused from so much blood loss, Elina struggles with parenting her newborn son and with making sense of what has happened to her. Her boyfriend, Ted, tries to be supportive, but he, too, is traumatized by seeing her so close to death.
The timelines alternate and develop independently with no apparent connection. Lexie suffers the loss of the love of her life. Her later involvement with a television journalist results in a pregnancy and birth of a son. Meanwhile Elina, suffering from lack of sleep and exhaustion, becomes increasingly concerned about Ted who begins experiencing blackouts and flashbacks. Although decades apart, Lexie and Elina have much in common. Both are both involved in the art world, struggle with motherhood to varying degrees, are fiercely passionate and protective of their infants, and try to regain their balance after the shock of motherhood.
O’Farrell weaves both timelines in a masterly fashion, drawing the reader into the lives of two different women in two different time frames. The novel is threaded with flashbacks, flashforwards, and foreshadowing. Ted’s flashbacks, triggered by the birth of his son, consist of fleeting images of a past he tries to decipher. Innes Kent’s magazine office is transformed into a coffee bar to be frequented by Ted fifty years later.
O’Farrell’s attention to detail, colorful images, and ability to imbue mundane activities with significance is uncanny. Her characters are authentic, well-rounded, interesting, and fully believable. Lexie and Elina are fascinating and particularly well-drawn. The descriptions of the city’s sights, sounds, and smells are immersive. But where O’Farrell excels is in her depiction of new motherhood, especially in the case of Elina. In words that mesmerize, she captures the exhaustion, desperation, fear, and overwhelming flood of emotions that Elina experiences as a first-time mother. These sections are breathtaking and illuminating.
O’Farrell flaunts rules of grammar, shifts verb tenses at leisure, and jumps from past to present and back again. One doesn’t quite know what to expect. She holds the reader’s attention at every turn with her consummate writing skills. A gifted writer with incredible range, Maggie O’Farrell has done it, again. She has produced another riveting tale from beginning to end.