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Oh Dear Silvia: The gloriously heartwarming novel from the No. 1 bestselling author of Because of You

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Ed has much mixed feelings for his ex wife, the things she has done and looking back on their relationship before she changed. Overall, I was impressed with Oh Dear Silvia, and though I was unsure of it at first, I was glad that I stayed with it as it improved from the midpoint onwards.

Yes, there was a bit of dark humour, and I smiled at a couple of things (mainly concerned with Tia) but I think there was a bit of false advertising at work here. So when I picked up "Oh Dear Silvia", I expected more of the same - something light and humorous, something to make me laugh and forget.Although she doesn't speak throughout the book, it shows six characters who visit her hospital room and have differing relationships with her, each very different from the others. This book follows Silvia Shute, who is currently in a coma in hospital after falling three floors from her balcony. All of the visitors, with the exception of her nurse who never knew her and her housekeeper, Silvia seems universally disliked.

Cassie was living at home when she discovered she was pregnant and then a week after telling her mother, she is evicted from the house. You take farewell of the characters like they are good friends (it really feels like they are) and even if it's a bit painful, you know it's time to let go. The sister is a hippy who wants to burn sage and place crystals everywhere and is totally clueless about normal human social interaction. It's confusing but the time that she was apparently kicked out didn't match up with her daughter's age or the time when her parents got divorced. I spent the majority thinking, well this isn't funny, she'd never be allowed to light candles in a real hospital because the alarms would go off and she'd be chucked out on her ear by security.Tia is foreign and her children taught her to use lots of swearing and incorrect words when talking - sure, it was funny at the start, but I found it to be tiresome after a while and didn't like it. Her past holds a dark and terrible secret, and now that she is unconscious in a hospital bed, her constant stream of visitors are set to uncover the mystery of her broken life. Starting with the character of Ed, Silvia's ex-husband, I struggled to understand why he was in her hospital room when according to him, she had completely beaten down his self-esteem to the point where there marriage ended and he no longer wanted to be around her. It's hard to have any action, except in flashbacks, when the whole novel takes place in a hospital room.

The first problem I had with the novel is that two of the six main characters have their speech written in dialect – Winnie in a Jamaican lingo - “Right, sidung ‘pon dat chair, sista. All centred around the now lifeless hub that is Silvia, the characters deal with their grief, guilt and fear, and it becomes clear - to them, and the reader - that humanity is a vital part of moving on in life. I felt myself looking forward to her chapters and hoping that if I were unlucky enough to ever have to spend some time in hospital that I would be blessed with a nurse like Winnie.

It didn’t bother me so much (even if I had to read a few things twice) but I can see why it has grated on a few people in their own reviews of this book as it’s something you tend to get told to avoid in creative writing.

Each character comes along to visit Silvia, for various different reasons, and through the things they have to say we learn about them as well as about Silvia. I didn't laugh out loud, but I did snigger a few times and there are some funny moments but really, don't read this expecting a comedy sketch, it's a great story just as it is and next time I won't hesitate in picking up one of her books. Perhaps it was the omniscient point of view, mixed in with the first person narratives of Silvia's nearest and dearest. At the beginning, I didn't enjoy the writing, particularly the way most of the words were underlined for emphasis.It's just so hard to read, and you really don't need that much of it to understand that the character has a thick Jamaican accent. Silvia is someone who admittedly isn’t always likable; she isn’t liked by all of her visitors and I enjoyed these sub-plots to the story and felt there were plenty of surprises along the way. In this sense, I thought the book offered something more interesting and different to the kind of narrative I would usually read. It's a story about loss and saying goodbye, but it's also a story about finding the truth and finding love.

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