With all my love (by Patricia Scanlan)

(Amazon UK link)

As far as I know, I’ve not previously read anything by Patricia Scanlan. But I’ve seen her name mentioned in Amazon recommendations; she’s sometimes compared to Maeve Binchy as a writer. So when I saw her novel ‘With all my love’ on a church book stall for 50p, it wasn’t a difficult decision to buy it. 

This happened in the summer of 2020, so the book was on my ‘to-be-read’ shelf for over five years. And finally I picked it up last week. Apparently it’s a ‘number one bestseller’, with another byline saying that it’s ‘this year’s most heartwarming novel’. It was published in 2013, and the first chapter is set in the 21st century. It follows a rather disturbing prologue in which a football player called Jeff is leaping into the air, full of enthusiasm, only to collapse and die.

In chapter one we meet a young woman called Briony, who is relaxing in Spain with her four-year-old daughter Katie. We quickly learn that she was made redundant a couple of months earlier, and also that she’s happily married to a man called Finn. He encouraged her to take some time off, to be a stay-at-home mother until Katie starts school. And right now, they’re in Spain spending some time with Briony’s mother Valerie. 

All seems to be going wonderfully well until Briony flicks through some old photos and discovers a letter addressed to her. So she opens it, and discovers that her mother has been lying to her for twenty-five years. When Valerie’s husband died, Valerie told Briony (who was four at the time) that his parents didn’t want to see her any more.  But this letter is from ‘Gramma Tessa’, saying how much she misses Briony, and longs to see her again…

It’s a dramatic and compelling start to the story, but (in my view) it then starts to go downhill. Briony had been very unhappy that she and her mother moved away from their home, into Dublin, and that her paternal grandparents apparently didn’t want to see her again. But gradually the memories faded, and she saw plenty of her mother’s mother, Carmen. Carmen is now in a nursing home with dementia, and Briony is determined to make contact with her father’s parents if at all possible. She also insists that she will never forgive her mother, and refuses to listen to any explanations. 

The story then gets quite confusing, as it leaps back into the past without warning, and without even a hint (such as a year) that would help the reader keep track. And there’s a lot of back story, with a lot of detail that, I felt, could have been edited significantly. We see Valerie as a teenager, the daughter of a very abusive man and a somewhat weak woman. I found her father extremely difficult to believe in; he’s rigid, and insists on being seen as a moral do-gooder. But he’s cheating people locally, bosses his wife around, and treats Valerie very badly.

So the story of Valerie meeting Jeff is covered in a lot of detail, up to the incident described in the prologue. But we also see other incidents in later years - I found it all quite confusing, although gradually the plot sorted itself out in my mind. Unfortunately there isn’t all that much plot, and none of the main characters feel entirely believable. Well, other than Jeff’s father, Lorcan, who is a thoroughly nice man, and Valerie’s best friend Lizzie who is reasonably sane and helps to sort out a lot of problems. 

But Valerie herself has been extremely vindictive, and even knowing her past, and her reasons, I couldn’t begin to see how she could be so unfair to her daughter. Briony is evidently cut from the same cloth; but with the advantage of having known all her life that her mother loved her. Tessa is totally unbelievable; seeing into her past, I could understand why she said some of the things she did. But not why she took such a strong dislike to Valerie, or why she can switch from a warm and caring grandmother into a vindictive, spiteful mother-in-law. 

As for Katie (and Briony at the same age in some of the flashback sections), they behave and speak more like two-year-olds than four-year-olds. I have been close to many children over the years, and have never heard a child of four say ‘I is…’ incorrectly. 

This all meant that I found the book quite dull, as I didn’t even believe in most of the characters, let alone care about them. As a grandmother, I could relate to a couple of scenes, including quite a moving one of eventual (inevitable) reconciliation. But that happens with such an unlikely coincidence that I was inwardly rolling my eyes.

I didn’t find that the writing reminded me of Maeve Binchy’s at all. Yes, the settings are similar, but that’s about all. Binchy’s characters feel realistic, and relate to each other in ways that are believable. And Maeve Binchy did not include lengthy descriptive passages, or tedious details of what people ate; nor does she spend a lot of time in introspection.  This novel, by contrast, is long-winded, full of irrelevancies and clichés. 

I was unimpressed with the number of sexual escapades mentioned in this book, too - not in gratuitous detail, thankfully, but still sufficient to make the book feel rather sordid at times. And whereas Maeve Binchy had a real faith, and described people’s beliefs and religious practices sympathetically, Patricia Scanlan uses rather random dreams, images and instincts to imply a kind of mystical deism that didn’t really make sense. 

Still, despite the many disappointing elements of this book, I did finish it in just a few days. I skimmed some of the unnecessary passages, as I was quite keen to get back to the ‘present’ part of the story to find out how it was going to end. I thought the last couple of chapters nicely done with an encouraging ending, although I didn’t entirely understand the significance of the final scene. 

Then there’s a short story at the end of the book. It’s about some more unlikeable people, where someone finally decides to take action in a rather rude way as she turns forty. It left rather a bad taste in my mouth. 

So while it’s not a terrible book, it’s not one I would recommend. I won’t be reading it again, and don’t plan to look for anything else by this writer. However, she’s evidently very highly regarded and this book has a lot of fans, so don’t necessarily take my word for it.

Review copyright 2025 Sue's Book Reviews