Book Review – The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell

When the sophisticated Innes Kent turns up on her doorstep, Lexie Sinclair realises she cannot wait any longer for her life to begin, and leaves for London. There, at the heart of the 1950s Soho art scene, she carves out a new life. In the present day, Elina and Ted are reeling from the difficult birth of their first child. Elina struggles to reconcile the demands of motherhood with sense of herself as an artist, and Ted is disturbed by memories of his own childhood that don’t tally with his parents’ version of events. As Ted begins to search for answers, an extraordinary portrait of two women is revealed, separated by fifty years, but connected in ways that neither could ever have expected.

The Hand That First Held is Maggie O’Farrell’s fifth book and Winner of the Costa Novel Award 2010. The novel focuses on the lives of two women; Lexie and Elina. We first meet Lexie as a young girl in the 1950s, living with her parents and longing to escape her rural confines to experience life. Elina, lives in present day London and has recently given birth to her first child. As their stories unwind it becomes clear that despite their different backgrounds, Elina and Lexie have more in common than their independence of spirit with ties that bind them across half a century.

The novel alternates between Lexie’s and Elina’s stories, starting with alternating chapters that focus on the events that bring Lexie to London and her developing relationship with journalist Innes Kent and Elina’s feelings about her new role as a mother following a traumatic birth. The two stories are seemingly unrelated but as the novel gathers pace, past and present threads come ever closer to revealing a dramatic truth connecting the two women making this an unputdownable piece of contemporary fiction.