The Memory

Lil and Irene are bound together by the ghost of Rose, a dark-haired girl with a snub nose and an extra chromosome. This is the story of the last 24 hours of Lil's life, the 40 years that Irene has been an only child, and Rose's sudden death. After a life-time of blame and lies, the truth about Rose is finally revealed and the tragedy of Irene's lifelong devotion and her long dead grandmother's deceit brought into the open.

Review :
The new novel from the bestselling author of the Howarth family saga. For the duration of one day, in 2002, while Irene struggles to look after her mother, Lilian, she revisits the past. We travel with her over the passage of nearly forty years of events leading up to the situation she is trying to cope with. Her mother is suffering from dementia and is difficult, petulant and lost in the decay of her own brain. Irenes relationship with her is already strained to breaking point, and the toll of her life experiences is pushing her ever closer to the brink of some desperate and fatal action. Irene is eight in 1963 when her sister is born. She comes home from school to discover the new arrival in the crib: a tiny baby with a shock of black hair and slanting dark eyes. Irene cant understand her mothers hostility towards this lovely baby, but Lilian cant even bear to look at her and plays little or no part in looking after her. Irenes father takes time off work to look after the new baby. When he has to go back to work, his mother-in-law comes to live with them, and though there is no love lost between Nanna and her daughter, Irene and her Nanna are very close and share an intense love for the baby. Rose, as Irene names her, has Downs syndrome, and as Irene takes over more and more of her care, she becomes aware of the embarrassment and pity which Roses appearance sparks in other people. It makes her furious and even more protective of her little sister. The situation at home is fraught. There are rows between Irenes dad and Lilian, and between her Nanna and Lilian long bitter arguments, centred around Lilians lack of love or care for Rose and her resentment towards her mother and husband. Irene takes Rose away from the awful tension as much as she can, often with her only close friend, Sam, who is there for her, steadfast and understanding, while her home life crumbles. With a calm and sensitive eye, author Judith Barrow deftly portrays the development of Irene, from a child welcoming the burden of caring for her little sister, to the young woman who denies her own ambitions to care for her Nanna, and ultimately as the middle-aged woman who sacrifices almost everything to look after her mother. There are so many women out there for whom this will ring true the cutting short of ones own plans because of the unrelenting demands of family, pulled by love and necessity into a life of caring for others. By interspersing Irenes memories of her life with the endless grind of this one day in 2002, Barrow gives a powerful demonstration of the huge difference for Irene between caring for someone whom she loves and the joyless, thankless task of looking after her mother. So much anger and distrust, and even hatred, make the act of caring one of bitter resentment, as Irene slogs through a day of spilled food, incontinence, screaming and crying from her mother. She does manage now and again a moment of sympathy and shared laughter, but these pass in the blinking of an eye, and its back to the relentless demands. Between Irene and her mother lies a terrible secret. One that Irene can never forgive, can never forget. She looks at her mother, and always that secret, the scene Irene witnessed all those years ago when Rose died, smothers any spark of love or empathy she might have. Judith Barrow is a talented storyteller, pulling the reader along through Irenes life so that we feel her moments of joy and plunge with her into the pits of despair and misery. If the final twist seems a little unbelievable, we only have to remember the lives of sacrifice and care that so many women have lived, and the fact that a member of the older generation might do anything to spare the younger ones the endless burden of caring. Lucy Walter It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Books Council of Wales. Gellir defnyddio'r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.