About the Book
Hartland House has always been a faithful keeper of secrets…
1958. Sent to beautiful Hartland to be sheltered from her mother’s illness, Liz spends the summer with the wealthy Shaw family. They treat Liz as one of their own, but their influence could be dangerous…
Now. Addie believes she knows everything about her mother Elizabeth and their difficult relationship until her recent death. When a stranger appears claiming to be Addie’s sister, she is stunned. Is everything she’s been told about her early life a lie?
How can you find the truth about the past if the one person who could tell you is gone? Addie must go back to that golden summer her mother never spoke of…and the one night that changed a young girl’s life for ever.
Format: Paperback (368 pages) Publisher: Headline
Publication date: 8th May 2018 Genre: Historical Fiction, Dual Time
Find My Mother’s Shadow on Goodreads
Purchase links
Bookshop.org
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops
Hive | Amazon UK
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme
My Review
Some serious subject matter, namely society’s attitude towards and treatment of young women in the 1950s, is contained within this dual time story about family secrets. I won’t say much more other than, in a small way, it put me in mind of Claire Keegan’s acclaimed novel, Small Things Like These.
Much my favourite element of the book were the sections from the point of view of Addie’s mother, Elizabeth, during the time she spends at Hartland House. She’s at an impressionable age and has been brought up in a household ruled by her strict father. I thought the author depicted really well the conflict Elizabeth feels between her joy at a glimpse into a different, freer kind of life and her guilt at being apart from her seriously ill mother. Elizabeth documents her experiences, including the relationships she forms with the members of the Shaw family, in meticulous detail in her journal. (Yes, I know, that trope beloved of historical novels, the secret diary.) She also writes the most heartrending letters to her mother.
I liked the way the author described the Sussex countryside and also how she subtly wove into the story themes of social inequality and the lingering impact of the Second World War. For example, Elizabeth is surprised at the spaciousness of Hartland House and the way the family live. She observes, ‘They must have no idea at all what other families live like. That living space for the majority of people is precious and rare, that up in London whole neighbourhoods have not yet been rebuilt after the Blitz, that people cram together in terrible hovels or ten to a house, with everyone from Grandma to the lodger slotted into bedrooms like sardines.
I’m going to be honest and say I was less engaged by the present day element of the story. I tried my best but I really couldn’t warm to Addie, who seemed to me to act in a much less mature way than you’d expect from someone supposed to be forty years old. She comes across as rather self-absorbed, a bit ditsy and someone whom chaos follows in her wake. However, I could sympathise with the situation she finds herself in as revelations about her family and demands for her attention from her (annoying) sister and her father come thick and fast in ‘an onslaught of needs and wants’. I thought she was rather mean to her best friend, Andrew and the side plot involving their childhood plan to go into business together was superfluous.
I’m afraid I also found the book rather slow – it’s 368 pages but felt longer partly perhaps because of the small text – although the pace does pick in the final third of the book as answers to the mystery are gradually revealed. And there’s a pretty good twist at one point although it does occur as a result of what I term a ‘Casablanca moment’, i.e. ‘Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine’. There were also a few elements, for me, that stretched credulity. Having said that, My Mother’s Shadow is an absorbing story with moments of real emotion that I’m sure many readers will enjoy.
I received a review copy courtesy of Headline.
In three words: Emotional, engaging, intimate
Try something similar: Only May by Carol Lovekin
About the Author
Born in Germany, Nikola Scott studied English and American literature before moving abroad to work as a fiction editor in New York and London. After over a decade in book publishing, she now lives in Frankfurt with her husband and two sons.
My Mother’s Shadow is her first novel. (Photo: Twitter profile)
Connect with Nikola
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram
What Cathy Read Next... 
As a child of the 1950s, this book has the potential to interest me, but you seem a little underwhelmed in your review, so I’d give it a go, without trying so very hard to source it.
LikeLike
There were aspects of it I liked but I wasn’t blown away by it overall.
LikeLiked by 1 person