This is going to be a short review because I read this book a few months ago, and the details have gotten a bit fuzzy.
I love Dawn French. Particularly right now – her short Vicar of Dibley in Lockdown revival and her podcast with Jennifer Saunders, Titting About, have been two of the very few and far between bright spots in the past year of incredible stress. So when I hit a reading slump in the fall, this was one of the only books I read (this and another by her). I read it in two days.
Now, the first thing I’m going to say about this book is that I have some complicated feelings about it. There were things I loved about it, but also things that I am still questioning.
The book deals with two couples – one couple are Black and the other bi-racial. The book begins with the two women in labour in the same hospital. What happens next is unthinkable for both women.
I can’t say much more about the plot without spoilers, and this book would be ruined by any. So that makes it a bit hard to review. The story itself was well-paced, written with emotion, and the characters drew me in (with one notable exception, but you’re not supposed to like that one). Once I got into it, I wanted to know what was going to happen and had trouble stopping for the night. There were some bits that felt a little too neat, and I really don’t think that the women would have been able to come to terms with the situation the way they did at the end. But I could acknowledge that and still enjoy the book for the most part. Even a few years ago, I would have been pretty satisfied with my reading experience with this book.
But it’s not a few years ago, and the way I think about representation has changed and evolved. Specifically, I’ve been putting a lot of thought lately into race and how it is portrayed in literature. As a White person, I don’t know for sure where the lines are, but I am questioning if it is okay for a White author to write Black characters, specifically if some or all of the story is told with an interior voice. This book is structured that way, and I don’t know how to feel about it. That is a separate and probably much longer discussion, but it is one of the main things that made me feel uncertain while I was reading. As a White person, the representation didn’t stand out as being overtly problematic in a way that had me putting the book down. But it also didn’t go into a lot of depth about addressing race or the complexities of navigating the world as a Person of Colour. This was the area I felt unsure about, and am not in any position to make that call. It’s the biggest thing that stood out to me about this book though, and something I think I’ll be mulling over for some time to come. (ETA: This book was recently picked for the Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist with Bernardine Evaristo as the chair and a diverse panel of judges, so that makes me feel better about the issue.)
I’m glad I picked this one up, if for no other reason than I’ve been meaning to try French’s writing for years and just never got around to it. I listened to this on audiobook, which I would definitely recommend, and I enjoyed the performance as much as the book itself. I enjoyed it enough that I immediately went into my second Dawn French book, A Tiny Bit Marvellous …. more on that coming soon!
I’d love to hear from any of you who have read this book. What did you think?
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock . . . midnight.
The old millennium turns into the new.
In the same hospital, two very different women give birth to two very similar daughters.
Hope leaves with a beautiful baby girl.
Anna leaves with empty arms.
Seventeen years later, the gods who keep watch over broken-hearted mothers wreak mighty revenge, and the truth starts rolling, terrible and deep, toward them all.
The power of mother-love will be tested to its limits.
Perhaps beyond . . . – Goodreads
Book Title: Because of You
Author: Dawn French
Series: No
Edition: Hardback
Published By: Michael Joseph
Released: October 15, 2020
Genre: Fiction, Family
Pages: 352
Date Read: October 25-27, 2020
Rating: 6/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.17/5 (1,617 ratings)