Review - Missing you Already by Pauline McLynn

Doing two reviews today as things are piling up around here! Unlike The Island which I have read so much about before I actually got my hands on the book, Missing you Already was just a book I picked up at the library.

For me, this book was a really good read. Kitty from a nondescript little town in Norfolk is someone who almost melts into the background and that is how she likes to be. She is in charge of the Lost and Found in a small railway station where there is not much of traffic, just a few trains stopping here and there, but she does take her job seriously.

Add to this her involvement with Dan from the time she was a teenager, the affair still going on despite Dan's marriage to Donna. Kitty sounds like the last person who would allow herself to get involved with someone who is married but this is something bigger than herself and she just cannot get out of the situation.

A further complication and this is the highlight of the story is Kitty's efforts to deal with her mother's increasing mental disability of Alzheimers. May has been an articulate, attractive, involved woman who now deteriorates to the point of being unrecognisable. Kitty's determination to handle this difficult situation single handedly almost is the crux of the story - her taking her mother to Egypt on a holiday of a lifetime shows Kitty's sheer grit in the face of so much adversity and braving people who have no inkling of May's condition and who put her down as being a mental case is admirable.

The book was not a light read - it dealt with a painful subject and one which is becoming increasingly common. May's idiosyncracies whilst being funny, are not funny in the manner in which it is portrayed in this book.

A really good book and a new author for me. McLynn has written several other novels and I will be definitely looking out for them. A 4 out of 5 for this one.