Finding Mother by Anne Allen
| Finding Mother by Anne Allen | |
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| Category: Women's Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Sue Magee
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| Summary: A real page turner which looks at what happens when a child seeks out her birth mother and quite a few screts are brought out into the open. Anne Allen popped into Bookbag Towers to chat to us. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 330 | Date: October 2013 |
| Publisher: Sarnia Press | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-0992711207 | |
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Nicole Oxford knew that her marriage was over when she discovered that Tom had been unfaithful - again. They'd seemed like the golden couple of television but that and their gorgeous home suddenly seemed as insubstantial as dust. Taking a break from work Nicole flew out to stay with her parents in Spain. Actually, they were her adoptive parents - and Nicole wondered if the bond between them all was going to be strong enough to stand the weight of what she was going to ask of them. Nicole had stopped liking herself and she felt that she needed to go back to her roots, discover who she was - and she wanted their help to trace her birth mother.
Before retiring to Spain her parents had lived in Jersey, where Nicole had grown up and it was where she returned to begin her search. The laws about whether or not children and birth parents can contact each other are different in the Channel Islands, but Anne Allen knows what she's talking about, having lived there for many years. Nicole does make meet up with her birth mother, in Guernsey and it's this that triggers enormous changes in the lives of Nicole, her mother and her birth grandmother. And Helene and Eve have both got secrets in their past which are going to have to be told.
I first encountered Anne Allen when I read Dangerous Waters: Mystery, Loss and Love on the Island of Guernsey and if you've read that book you'll notice a glancing reference to Jeanne, the heroine, in Finding Mother. I felt nicely grounded! In much the same way that Allen wormed Jeanne into my heart I really found that I cared for Nicole and willing her on to make the right decisions and a success of her life. Allen has a real talent for her female characters. The men don't come off the page quite as well, but that's a minor quibble.
Tracing a birth parent when you've been adopted is a sensitive subject and Allen handles it well, recognising the insecurities of the adopting parents who wonder if they're going to be supplanted and the worries of the mother who gave up the child soon after her birth. Will she be judged for her relationship with the child's father and for the fact that she made no attempt to bring the child up herself? There's an added complication here in that Nicole will also find out about her birth father - giving her more parents than any girl should decently want! It's neatly, elegantly done and the story is a real page turner.
I'd like to thank the publisher for sending a copy to the Bookbag.
for more from Guernsey we can recommend The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer.
You can read more about Anne Allen here.
Anne Allen was kind enough to be interviewed by Bookbag.
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