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And what a page-turner it is! It’s very cleverly written, and I can see why the author turned to suspense or thrillers. This book, however, is standard women’s fiction told mainly from the viewpoint of thirty-two year old Melody, with intervening sections telling snippets from her childhood. The twist - and it’s an unusual device - is that Melody has no memory of anything that happened until she was nine, and a fire destroyed her home.
The prologue shows Melody waking up after being unconscious due to smoke inhalation. She recognises the concerned people around her as her mother and father, and recalls his strong arms lifting her out of her bed, taking her to safety..
We’re then taken to the present day where Melody lives in a council flat with her son Ed, whom she had when she was just fifteen. She hasn’t seen or spoken to her parents since she told them about her pregnancy, which shocked them so much that she left with her boyfriend. He then left Melody, but she turned out to be an excellent mother and she’s very close to Ed.
A friendly man on a bus starts chatting to Melody one afternoon, and invites her out. They go to a show featuring a hypnotist, and Melody is selected for a performance on stage. She has to pretend to be five years old, which she finds herself doing much more easily and naturally than she would have expected. Then she faints, causing havoc around her, and after she wakes she starts having unexpected flashbacks of her early childhood.
It’s confusing at first, a muddle of people and places, but that reflects well her own confusion. She wonders if she’s imagining it all at first but gradually more of the pieces slot into place…
The writing is excellent (if a tad too peppered with expletives for my taste), the characters well-rounded, and I thought the scenes from Melody’s childhood were extremely well done. She’s a self-contained, friendly person who deals with changes and different people as well as any child could. She’s aware from a young age that she sometimes has to tread carefully; she knows when to ask questions and when to stay quiet. She accepts people for who they are, and is understanding and forgiving when adults get things wrong.
Gradually the picture falls into place, and the pace picks up as we see drama and emotion, and many people and places which Melody had totally forgotten about. It’s extremely well done, and while it all ends perhaps a tad too tidily with almost every thread being neatly tied up, I don’t have an issue with that; I like satisfactory endings, particularly when some of the revelations had been quite shocking.
I could empathise with the adult Melody being totally confused, although she seems to handle all the new revelations remarkably easily. I was less understanding of her long estrangement from her parents; it seemed a drastic thing to do, keeping them from Ed. I could believe more in Melody as a thoughtful child who observes, feels, longs to be loved and appreciates every little bit of affection she is given. She has to deal with more trauma than any child should have to cope with - and even her total memory loss makes sense in the final chapter.
Overall I thought this an excellent read and would recommend it highly to anyone who likes women’s fiction with some tension and mystery that’s gradually unravelled. ‘The Truth about Melody Browne’ reminded me a bit of some of Louise Candlish’s earlier books.
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