RaveThe Times (UK)One of the many fascinating things about this beautifully written book is that it asks us to consider what counts as normal behaviour and what doesn’t ... This is a highly accomplished memoir. Cho deftly weaves the strands of her experience to create something striking and original. It is also a love story.
Jayson Greene
PositiveThe TimesThis minutely observed memoir will surely be helpful to other people whose world changes in an instant. Greene, a journalist, never flinches from his distress and is not ashamed to describe himself as he truly is as he struggles to carry on in a world where Greta no longer exists. He has an eye for pinning precise detail and there is a dark humour to be had in some of the sections where they go to grief support groups that sometimes help and often don’t ... It is a hopeful book, in many ways.
Richard Beard
MixedThe Sunday TimesThis is not a sentimental book, which is always doled out as high praise when it comes to memoir, as though the worst sin for literary types would be to shed a tear from behind our rose-tinted spectacles. It’s an absorbing read, but by the end I was torn between wanting to reach into the pages and give the 11-year-old Richard a big cuddle, and finding the relentlessly forensic search for the raw feeling that the adult Beard thinks he has been denied a bit wearying ... I didn’t need him to shed buckets of tears, but I was longing for him to uncover a tiny well of tenderness or compassion, for himself and his parents. Really this is a study in repression, and I was left unsure how much the author realises it. Perhaps writing a memoir is no more effective a strategy for inner peace than denial.
