A dead woman is the central character of The Love She Left Behind by British author Amanda Coe (What They Do in the Dark). The deceased is Sara, who, 35 years before her death from stomach cancer, deserted her husband and children--Nigel, then age 13, and Louise, age 10--and gave up everything to live with Patrick, a playwright for whom she was muse. Patrick never had any fondness for his stepchildren. After Sara uprooted her life for him, Patrick paid for Nigel to attend boarding school and Louise was shipped off to live with an aunt--this, after their birth father remarried and rejected them.
The book opens in Cornwall, in the now-dilapidated house Sara and Patrick shared. Nigel--a married, Type-A lawyer and father with a nervous stomach--has little care or respect for Louise, a divorced, overweight, working-class mother of two rebellious teenagers over whom she has little power or control.
Both children were under the impression that Sara and Patrick had shared a storybook life together. However, when Nigel and Louise arrive in Cornwall, they are faced with Patrick's irritability, drunkenness and writer's block. They are also surprised to discover that Sara had been sleeping in a separate bedroom for months and that Patrick was completely unaware of Sara's prolonged illness.
As the three go over details and assimilate the contents of Sara's will, it is revealed that the couple's house and the dramatic rights to Bloody Empire--a popular play Patrick wrote in the 1980s--were put in Sara's name for tax purposes. Patrick battles Nigel and Louise over the transfer of ownership, and brother and sister also lock horns.
In the midst of the strained family dynamic, Mia, a journalism student who's always been intrigued by Patrick's work, arrives to write a feature about the once-great playwright. Patrick relishes the attention of Mia, who is charmed by the aura surrounding a writer's life. Affection between the two grows, and they ultimately become allies in the fight that escalates when Louise starts to depend on a telephone psychic for guidance, the house undergoes a renovation and old friends pay Patrick a visit.
Throughout the narrative, letters written by Sara and Patrick shed light on their relationship and how it frayed over time; their interactions with her children; and the hard-bitten and provocative nature of Patrick's most notable work.
Coe employs dark comedy to piece together and acutely observe emotional issues dealing with abandonment, loss, death and grief. The idea that we do not truly know the ones we love--and even if we think we do, we never really get the whole picture--serves to solidify the cracked fault lines in the foundation of this thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking family saga. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines
Shelf Talker: A torn-apart British family is forced back together to settle the affairs of its deceased matriarch.