The Hand That First Held Mine - Hardcover

O'Farrell, Maggie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0547330790 ISBN 13: 9780547330792

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010

Synopsis

From the best-selling author of The Vanishing of Esme Lennox comes a spellbinding novel that shows there are no accidents, in life and in love.

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Frustrated with her parents' genteel country life, Lexie Sinclair plans her escape to London. There, she takes up with Innes Kent, a magazine editor who introduces her to the thrilling, underground world of bohemian, postwar Soho. She learns to be a reporter, comes to know art and artists, and embraces her freedom fully. So when she finds herself pregnant, she doesn't hesitate to have the baby on her own. Later, in present-day London, a young painter named Elina dizzily navigates the first weeks of motherhood and finds she can't remember giving birth, while her boyfriend Ted is flooded with memories and images he cannot place. As their stories unfoldâ moving in time and changing voice chapter by chapterâ a connection between the three of them takes shape that drives the novel towards a tremendous revelation. Praised by The Washington Post as a â breathtaking, heart-breaking creation,â The Hand That First Held Mine is a gorgeous and tenderly wrought story about the ways in which love and beauty bind us together.

About this title

About the Author

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

From the Back Cover

Praise for The Hand That First Held Mine

"Maggie O'Farrell knows how to weave a bewitching tale, both thrilling and poetic. The Hand That First Held Mine will no doubt enrapture you, just as it has me." -- Tatiana de Rosnay, author of Sarah's Key

"An exquisitely sensual tale of love, motherhood, and other forms of madness, The Hand That First Held Mine will unsettle, move, and haunt you." Emma Donoghue, author of Slammerkin

"O'Farrell deftly depicts the long-after shocks of death, betrayal, and life-changing love as her richly complicated characters play out an immensely satisfying plot. This is a dazzling and absorbing novel." Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street

"O'Farrell is an uncommonly perceptive writer, and The Hand That First Held Mine is an unforgettable story of family, ambition, and love. I couldn't stop thinking about it long after I read the final page." Lauren Grodstein, author of A Friend of the Family

"Maggie O'Farrell's cinematically vivid novel is moody and powerful and plotted at a breakneck pace. This book, like life, will disarm you with its unannounced twists and tragedies and moments of unexpected beauty. She delivers to readers that rarest of experiences-- total emotional investment. Hers is a brilliant feat of prose marksmanship-- also, it made me cry on the subway." -- Heidi Julavits, author of The Uses of Enchantment

From the Inside Flap

Lexie Sinclair is plotting an extraordinary life for herself.

Hedged in by her parents' genteel country life, she plans her escape to London. There, she takes up with Innes Kent, a magazine editor who wears duck-egg blue ties and introduces her to the thrilling, underground world of bohemian, post-war Soho. She learns to be a reporter, to know art and artists, to embrace her life fully and with a deep love at the center of it. She creates many lives--all of them unconventional. And when she finds herself pregnant, she doesn't hesitate to have the baby on her own terms.

Later, in present-day London, a young painter named Elina dizzily navigates the first weeks of motherhood. She doesn't recognize herself: she finds herself walking outside with no shoes; she goes to the restaurant for lunch at nine in the morning; she can't recall the small matter of giving birth. But for her boyfriend, Ted, fatherhood is calling up lost memories, with images he cannot place.

As Ted's memories become more disconcerting and more frequent, it seems that something might connect these two stories-- these two women-- something that becomes all the more heartbreaking and beautiful as they all hurtle toward its revelation.

Here Maggie O'Farrell brings us a spellbinding novel of two women connected across fifty years by art, love, betrayals, secrets, and motherhood. Like her acclaimed The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, it is a "breathtaking, heart-breaking creation."*And it is a gorgeous inquiry into the ways we make and unmake our lives, who we know ourselves to be, and how even our most accidental legacies connect us.

*The Washington Post Book World

Reviews

O'Farrell (TheVanishing Act of Esme Lennox) interweaves two seemingly unconnected stories—that of Lexie Sinclair, living in post-WWII London, and Elina Vilkuna, a denizen of present-day London. Lexie is a rebellious 21-year-old, and when she meets handsome and sophisticated Innes Kent, she realizes he's the one who can help her find the adventure and excitement she craves. Their affair coincides with her moving up in the ranks at the magazine he edits, but a tragedy changes Lexie's life forever. Fifty-odd years later, Elina, a painter, faces her own struggles: she recently had a son with her boyfriend, Ted, and, after a rough child-birth, Ted and Elina struggle to recalibrate their relationship as it evolves into parenthood. While O'Farrell brings Lexie to life, she does not achieve the same with Elina and Ted, who come across as just another bland couple facing the challenges of having a child. The two plots are, naturally, connected, but the contemporary plot doesn't really get moving until too late in the book. If the contemporary storyline was developed half as well as the historical plot, this would be a wonderful book. As it is, it feels lighter than it should. (Apr.)
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Lexi and Elina are separated by time. The former is a young ingenue of late 1950s London, and the latter, a young mother in the present. From the outset, readers are told Lexi will die young. Every joyous occasion she experiences (meeting the love of her life, becoming an art critic, and, later, having a son) is tempered by the dread of her oncoming demise. Her incredible luck finally runs dry in a tragedy worthy of Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies. Elina’s tale, the lesser of the two, focuses on her nuclear family—Ted, her boyfriend, and their newborn son. Ted’s fears about losing Elina after she almost died giving birth trigger repressed memories, which finally draw the two narratives together. O’Farrell (The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, 2007) is cinematic in her approach, utilizing close-ups, fast-forwards, and rewinds to move the story along at a good clip. Here, the timeless wrestling of motherhood and identity are expertly explored with compassion and heartrending accuracy. --Courtney Jones

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0547330790
• ISBN 13: 9780547330792
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 341