Picking up the Pieces (by Mary Sheepshanks)

I do like Mary Sheepshanks’ novels! She only wrote four under this name, and another two under the name of Mary Nickson. I’m re-reading them at the rate of about one a month, and just finished ‘Picking up the Pieces’. I had no idea, when I first read it in 2001, that it’s a sort of sequel to ‘A Price for Everything’. It doesn’t involve the same main characters, but some of them reappear in more minor roles.

Kate, a 55-year-old grandmother, is the main protagonist of this story. Back when I first read it, I had just turned 41, so thought of Kate as a mature, older woman. Now, nearly five years older than Kate, with grandchildren of my own, I see her as a contemporary. Not that it matters. She’s a very likeable person with a good sense of humour, but her self-confidence is very low. The reasons for that become gradually clearer over the course of the book.

We meet Kate on the anniversary of her husband Oliver’s death. She’s at a lunch party with some people she doesn’t much like, and leaves early. She decides to go for a drive, and then takes her dog for a walk in the grounds of a mansion which she knows is empty. She sees a place that looks like the house of her dreams, albeit very run down, and when she sits down for a rest, she drops off to sleep. She wakes to find herself being observed…

Kate lives with her mother-in-law Cecily, a strong-minded lady in her eighties whose conversation is peppered with amusing malapropisms. Kate and Cecily get along very well; unfortunately Kate doesn’t get along so well with her daughter Jo. Jo is a prickly kind of person, immensely talented at cooking and organising, but she carries a secret that isn’t revealed until near the end. Jo has three children: the teenage Harriet, whose father is unknown, and two younger children with her husband Mike. She struggles to deal with motherhood, particularly with Harriet.

So there are four generations involved in this book, and the author succeeds in making them all believable, well-rounded characters. Harriet has an excellent relationship with Kate, and that aggravates Jo. I could almost hear some of their conversations, and felt so sorry for Harriet, going through teenage angst and feeling unwanted. Yet Jo, despite her prickliness, is also a very realistic person.

It’s primarily character-driven, as the people in the book explore relationships, make decisions, are willing to compromise, and find love, sometimes in unexpected places. A marriage founders, two teenagers behave rebelliously, and various people discover new talents.

I had entirely forgotten the plot of this story, so there were a couple of surprises that I was not expecting at all - perhaps it’s good to put a book aside for eighteen years, although I like to think that I’ll read it again before I’m getting close to Cecily’s age. The pace is good, the writing excellent, and by the time I was half way through I could barely put the book down. I chuckled a couple of times, and I was very moved in some of the sections towards the end.

The only part about the book that seemed out of place was a meeting when Kate and her friends go to visit a supposed spiritualist couple hosted by Lady Rosamund (one of the main characters of ‘A Price for Everything’). The scene is somewhat ridiculous, the author making a mockery of the people concerned, so perhaps it was there for the humour value; yet it didn’t add to the story at all.

Other than that, though, I loved 'Picking up the Pieces' and would recommend it very highly to anyone who likes women’s fiction.  Sadly it's no longer in print, but it's fairly often available second-hand.

Review copyright 2019 Sue's Book Reviews