Much more to this than meets the eye
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The blurb
From the bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Tulip Fever, a deliciously funny, poignant and wry novel, full of surprising twists and turns.
James is getting on a bit and needs full-time help. So Phoebe and Robert, his middle-aged offspring, employ Mandy, who seems willing to take him off their hands. But as James regales his family with tales of Mandy's virtues, their shopping trips, and the shared pleasure of their journeys to garden centres, Phoebe and Robert sense something is amiss. Is this really their father, the distant figure who never once turned up for a sports day, now happily chortling over cuckoo clocks and television soaps?
Then something happens that throws everything into new relief, and Phoebe and Robert discover that life most definitely does not stop for the elderly. It just moves onto a very different plane - changing all the stories they thought they knew so well.
The Review
I got much more from this book than I was anticipating. I was prepared for a feel-good family drama, but this book has far more layers to it than that. Yes, it is endearing, but it quickly became much, much more.
Moggach paints a shrewd observation of family dynamics. Phoebe and Robert are both in their 60's and despite their love for their father; neither of them wants to take on responsibility for his full time care. The plot of this book really taps into the crisis we have about how best to look after our elderly. We all want to do the best for ageing family members, but those decisions can come with intense feelings of guilt and resentment that can be hard for the closest of siblings to manage.
Enter Mandy, the new carer they find for their father, who seems to have been sent to solve all their problems. The characterisation in this novel is fantastic and the envy and resentment that Phoebe and Robert start to feel at Mandy's developing friendship with their father, is palpable. Moggach sets the scene beautifully for suspicions about Mandy to start building... could she be too good to be true?
I really liked the parent-child dynamic that this book explores. How the memories of Phoebe and Robert's childhood become romanticized in their heads. And how hard it is for them to see their mother and father as people outside of their role as their parents. How shocked they are that they could have their own secrets and mistakes that they keep hidden away. That was what I enjoyed most about this book - what on the surface seemed like a straightforward tale turned out to have so much more about it.
At the crux of it, this is a book about love, in all its many forms - familial, romantic, friendly. And it is told in a really tender hearted and humorous way. I was especially touched by how James sums up the loss of his beloved wife:
"Our marriage was one long conversation that was only interrupted by her death"
The Carer is released in paperback on 14th May 2020 by Tinder Press
Big thanks to @annecater at Random things tours, for organising and inviting me to take part in the blog tour. This is my honest and unbiased opinion.