Delightful, tear-jerking love story despite grim subject
Louisa Clarke feels a failure. Always in her younger sister’s shadow, she helps her parents financially, and when the cafe she’s worked in for years closes its doors, she fears unemployment. As well she might. Soon the job centre, in despair, suggest she becomes a pole dancer. So becoming a carer to a quadriplegic is a last resort, not an aspiration.
After an awkward interview with her patient’s glacial mother, she meets her charge. Will Traynor, who was a whizz in the City, is now unkempt and surly. She wonders how she’ll stick the job for the allotted six months, until she overhears a conversation that changes her attitude utterly.
From then on, the work consumes her. Researching on the internet, she thinks up ways to interest Will; some successful, others, like the horse-racing excursion, disastrous. Becoming less truculent, Will takes an interest in his quirkily dressed carer. He encourages her to read, and explore her intellect. And when he persuades her to accompany him to a classical concert, she is astonished at the emotions the music evokes.
‘I hadn’t realised that music could unlock things in you, could transport you to somewhere even the composer hadn’t predicted.’
Will sees a rosy future for Louisa, but she has demons of her own. Her home life, meanwhile, is complex. Her father’s job is in jeopardy, and her sister, a single mum, decides to return to university. Her boyfriend is more interested in training for marathons than seeing her.
Running man, as Will dubs him, becomes jealous of her job. And no wonder, when Louisa spends every spare minute planning an activity holiday of a lifetime for her disabled charge. But can she make him have a change of heart?
JoJo Moyes writes top end women’s fiction. There’s always romance, along with a strong plot, but her strength, for me, lies in her ability to create colourful, yet sympathetic characters; characters you care about.
Louisa narrates the story with warmth, humour and delicacy. Through her, we see, only too clearly, how desperate the life of a young quadriplegic can be. It’s not just that he can never ski, never have sex, and never even move in bed without help; it’s that his ability to choose for himself has been taken away from him.
This novel sees Moyes at the top of her form. She blends her research into the story seamlessly, and has turned a grim subject into a delightful, if tear-jerking, love story. This book made me laugh; it made me cry; but most of all, it made me examine all the complexities of disability in a fresh light.
