Vous ne me connaissez pas - ou plutôt vous ne nous connaissez pas. Je m'appelle Adam Ferris et mon fils se nomme Max. Il a quatre ans - bientôt cinq - et c'est à son propos que je vous écris. Il y a deux ans, Max était très malade: il souffrait d'une leucémie aiguë. Vous lui avez sauvé la vie grâce à votre généreux don de moelle ... Vous avez rendu la vie à mon petit garçon. Vous me l'avez rendu, à moi, alors que je croyais le perdre - oh zut, maintenant évidemment je pleure en écrivant ...!
Exploring the heart-wrenching theme of lost love, this story delves into the emotional turmoil faced by a protagonist whose partner has moved on after losing all memories of their relationship. As they grapple with feelings of betrayal and longing, the narrative unfolds through poignant moments and reflections on love, identity, and the power of memory. The journey highlights the struggle to reclaim a past that seems irretrievably lost while navigating the complexities of moving forward.
Despite being adopted, Emma Victor didn't feel all that different as a child; at least not for the first nine years of her life. Then her adoptive parents had a baby - Stella - of their own. Ten years later they were killed in a car crash - and Emma, aged 19, was left to bring Stella up alone, at an age when she should have been partying, not parenting. Ten years on, Stella has grown up. Now 19 herself, she is beautiful, confident and happy. Emma, however, is in a rut. Her career and love-life are going nowhere fast. Nearly 30, she feels she's not just on the shelf, but in danger of falling off it. But an extraordinary confrontation with a tramp on a tube shakes her from her lethargy, and she starts on a search for her birth mother; a search which, fearful both of what she might find and how it might affect Stella, she has been putting off for years. Are You My Mother? was a book that Emma used to read to Stella, when Stella was a toddler. Now the story of the little lost baby bird and the emotion and pathos of its quest for its mother haunts her as, with the help of her friend Mack, she tracks down five women with the same name; one of whom must be her mother. Emma soon finds however that her search is not so much for her mother but for her own identity. She has spent so long fulfilling roles for other people - daughter, girlfriend, sister, surrogate mother - that she has little idea of who or what she really is. Tentative at first but soon gaining in momentum, her search begins to change her life in more ways than she could possibly have imagined.
The narrative explores the journey of self-discovery and renewal, emphasizing that true transformation often follows a period of hardship. Characters confront their pasts and the challenges that led them to a crossroads, ultimately finding hope and new beginnings. The story highlights the resilience of the human spirit and the importance of embracing change after hitting rock bottom.
Helena Nicholls - ex world-famous pop star and prime-time DJ - wakes up in hospital to find her looks, her career and her personal life in tatters. She has been let down by her boyfriend, and the one person she loved most in the world - her best friend since the age of five - is dead. She feels that she belongs nowhere, and her sense of identity, fragile at the best of times, is in pieces. So Helena turns to the one thing that has always got her through, the one thing that has real resonance: music. And she begins to concoct The Plan. Using the request format that made her radio show so popular, where listeners rang in with detailed stories about why certain songs were so meaningful for them, she sets out the story of her own life, chapter by chapter, track by track. Thinking about the songs that represent important chapters in her own life, Helena begins to come to terms with her past. But the present is more of a problem as, while in hospital, she has remet an old friend to whom she is still hugely attracted. Her strict adherence to The Plan, however, means that time is not on her side. If she is to have a future at all, she must work out what it really means To Be Someone. With
A tense, Hitchcockian psychological thriller in which nothing is as it seems,
every truth might be a lie, and the past looms ever larger over the present,
The Old You is a nail-bitingly modern slice of domestic noir.
