The Hand That First Held Mine [Audio CD]

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Hachette Audio
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1405508477
• ISBN-13: 978-1405508476
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)

More About the Author

MAGGIE O'FARRELL is the author of four previous novels, including the acclaimed The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, which was a B&N Recommends Pick, and After You'd Gone. Born in Northern Ireland in 1972, O'Farrell grew up in Wales and Scotland. She has two children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

76 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Accidental Legacies, March 17, 2010

By 

Mr. August "Literature lover" (Highland Park, IL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Hand That First Held Mine (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I have not read Maggie O'Farrell's work before, but I certainly will retrieve her prior novels with the hope of discovering similar strong characterizations and taut plots.

This story develops when Alexandra Sinclair, renamed Lexie by the love of her life, Innes Kent, leaves her traditional family and moves to London. The setting is Bohemian post war London in the 1950's when most women lived with their families or boarding houses for women only. Lexie is unconventional; she is ahead of her time, she is independent, passionate and wants to carve a niche for herself. With the help and high powered love of Innes, she becomes knowledgeable about art and turns herself into a credible reporter. She works hard in this Soho art scene and is rewarded with like-minded friends. Tragedy befalls her and eventually she ends up an "unwed" mother out of choice. Throughout her travails, she holds onto her passion for Innes and confidence in herself as a mother and journalist.

Decades later, another woman in London, has a near death experience giving birth to her son, Jonah. Elina is also not married but is a loyal, bright companion to Ted, the father of her child. She is also an artist and has a solid understanding of contemporary art and its value. Ted, who is nearly paralyzed by nearly losing Elina during labor, begins to recover lost memories. These memories traumatize him and he experiences deep loss.

O'Farrell draws a brilliant connection between Lexie, Innes, Elina and Ted. There are other significant characters (Margot and Felix for example) weaved into the plot with strong purpose. Both Elina and Lexie are transformed by motherhood and their individual expression of motherhood is the best I have read. The author links the stories at the end, not too surprising, but there are some twists which convinced me that some birthrights deserve to be carried on.

50 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars In the minority, but just couldn't get through it, May 2, 2010

By 

N. B. Kennedy (Hopewell, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hand That First Held Mine (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I was really looking forward to this read. Reviewed in the New York Times, Amazon Book of the Month. And what a terrific title and great cover!

This parallel story, one of a woman in 1950s London and another woman in present-day London, sounded intriguing. And it starts off strongly with the character of Lexie, a headstrong country girl who moves to London on a whim. The author creates a terrific character in Lexie, and in the first man she attaches herself to, Innes Kent.

But Elina's story starts so slowly and oddly that I quickly lost interest. A woman who doesn't remember having a baby? Post-partum depression, sure, but isn't this a wee bit over the top?

But to give it a good try, I decided just to follow Lexie's story first and then come back to Elina. Even reading Lexie's story straight through, skipping every other chapter, I started to lose interest in her. The men in her life begin to mount -- Innes, Felix, Robert -- until I lost track. No one seems to stay around very long. I didn't really care to, either.

Returning to Elina, I did the chapter-skipping thing again until I got to the point that Elina comes around but her boyfriend Ted starts slipping away from reality. This is pretty much where I gave up. It was all too hazy for me.

Everything about the novel worked against my involvement in it. The alternating stories drove me nuts. I'm a buy-and-hold reader and want to stick with a character. The author also plays puppet master -- "Here is Lexie, standing on a pavement in Marble Arch" -- a literary device that distracted me. And O'Farrell foreshadows to the point of making my own reading seem unnecessary: "Life as she will know it is about to begin..." "Innes' flat today is no longer a flat... he is gone. And so is Lexie."

Eventually, I skipped to the end. I won't print a spoiler here, but the payoff just wasn't worth going back to get what I'd missed. It looks like I'm in the minority, though, so maybe you'll think differently.

38 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Ferocity of Love, March 29, 2010

By 

Karie Hoskins "karieh" (Everett, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hand That First Held Mine (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

"The Hand that First Held Mine". It feels as if a hand has taken yours as you start reading. As if you are being gently led into a new world. You are directed where to look, introduced to people as they enter the story. Given help as you adjust to this new place...are birthed into this book.

I liked this narrative tool - like the scene direction that the reader is given by the author. It gives a certain texture to the words that made the actions even more visual, a movie that unfolds before us...or rewinds in front of our eyes.

"But this is anticipating. The film needs to be rewound a little. Watch. Innes sucks in a nimbus of smoke, lifts a cigarette stub from the ashtray, he appears to envelop Lexie in a shirt and push her across the room, the pillows jump onto the bed, Lexie zooms backwards towards the window."

I was a bit unsure where this book was going...who the focus of the book would be. What the focus would be. Was this a story about the cataclysmic change that happens as one becomes a mother? Was this a story about madness? Were we being brought slowly behind the scenes of a mystery? Or was it a story about parents and children and that special kind of love?

"Elina and the baby walk together to the window. They don't take their eyes off each other. He blinks a little in the bright light but stared up at her, as if the sight of her to him is like water to a plant. Elina leans against the windows to the garden. She raises the baby so that his forehead touches her cheek, as if anointing him or greeting him, as if thy are starting all the way back at the beginning."

I was enjoying the story, I was interested in the characters...but I wasn't engrossed in the book. And then...I put it down for a week. I read two other books...and then came back to "The Hand that First Held Mine"...and I was hooked. Something about the story had changed, or I'd been wondering about the characters...and I inhaled the last third of the book.

Something about this story of couples and parents in two different time periods but in the same places had worked on my imagination. I had to know what happened...both in the future and in the past. I'd grown accustomed to the rhythm of their lives and the scenery of their world and had to have more.

"He feels for a moment the vastness of the city, the whole breathing breadth of it and he feels as if he and this girl, this woman, are sitting together in its very centre, at the very eye of its storm, and he feels as if they might be the only people who are doing this, who have ever done this."

I can't explain what grabbed me at the end of this book, I can only say that I almost couldn't turn the pages fast enough. I had to know how all of these lives tied into one another...what might have happened in one character's past to determine another character's future. I had to experience what they did...yet in some cases I already had.

"So, she thinks to herself, no walk for you today. And she must sit here for however long he sleeps. Which isn't the worst thing in the world, is it? But for a moment it seems to Elina that it is. She has such an urge, such an ache to go out, to see something other than the interior walls of this house, to apprehend the world, to move about in it. Sometimes she finds herself eying Ted when he has come in from work, when the life of the city still seems to cling to him. She sometimes wants to stand near to him, to sniff him, to catch the scent of it. She wants, desperately, to be somewhere else - anywhere else."

Ulitmately, I think this story is about the ferocity of love. Specifically the love between a mother and a child. The bond that exists between them - an invisible, nearly unbreakable bond. A bond that is magical, and terrifying and inexplicable. There is beauty in this story, beauty in words and action and descriptions. But none was more beautiful for me than the story about that bond.

"The women we become after children...We lose muscle tone, sleep, reason, perspective. Our hearts begin to live outside our bodies. They breathe, they eat, they crawl and - look! - they walk, they begin to speak to us. We learn that we must sometimes walk an inch at a time, to stop and examine every stick, every stone, every squished can along the way. We get used to not getting where we were going...We get used to living with a love that suffuses us, suffocates us, blinds us, controls us. We live."