Oh Dear Silvia: The gloriously heartwarming novel from the No. 1 bestselling author of Because of You

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The concept is original, the structure is flawless, the characters are all fully realised, the dialogue is very human and real, the plot twists are genuinely shocking, the funny sections are really funny and the sad bits had me weeping openly in my car on the way to and from work. Her past holds a dark and terrible secret, and now that she is unconscious in a hospital bed, her constant stream of visitors are set to uncover the mystery of her broken life. After having read "A tiny bit marvellous" - Dawn French's debut fictional novel - I had high hopes for Oh Dear Silvia, but I was also slightly apprehensive.

My final thoughts about this book are that it seemed muddled, confused and there were quite a few issues with all of the main characters. Instead what I got was the tale of a complex woman, one misunderstood by almost everyone in her life, told through the visitors to her hospital room, where she lies in a coma. I think she’s fabulous and very funny and the only time I’ve ever been reprimanded on an airplane was when I was watching The Vicar of Dibley and laughing too loud. The motley collection of characters put together by French are certainly an interesting bunch and keep us guessing as to what they will do next. Dawn French’s first novel ‘A Tiny Bit Marvellous’ was really good but this second novel is incredible.It starts slowly and the reader is introduced one by one to Sylvia's visitors ( Tia was a brilliant character to lift the mood of the book)and I wondered where exactly the plot was going, but right in the middle the book took a completely different direction and from then on i couldn't put this book down! I didn’t like many of the characters apart from Winnie and Cassie (and Willow), but it was interesting to read how their stories interacted as they talked with Silvia - their friend, ex-wife, employer, mother and patient - who was in intensive care in a coma. Each character talks to Silvia in her coma, their stories all seen from her hospital bed (including occasional clunky exposition but that can e forgiven). There is some funny parts in this book that will make you laugh out loud, and the characters themselves are very interesting, but there is just something about this book that is missing.

Throughout her time in hospital, she is visited by family, her best friend, her ex-husband, her nurse, and her cleaner. Although I loved Winnie and Cassie as people, I thought other points of view were very stereotypical and unnecessary so that is why I gave this book 2 stars.

I have heard people say that this depiction of a Jamaican woman was stereotypical but I personally disagree because I liked that you read it through her voice. Un vantaggio però c'è, nella solitudine, e cioè che attraverso di lei tutto acquista un fascino particolare.

When Dawn French wrote her first novel A Tiny Bit Marvellous I was eager to read it, looking forward to plenty of silly humour and those elusive-when-reading out loud laughs.The nurse Winnie was probably one of my favourite characters and I really loved that Dawn French supposedly took inspiration from her ex-husband Lenny Henry and his mother. Additionally, it's hard to believe that each one of these characters would speak aloud and at such length to the comatose Silvia - pouring out their thoughts and dreams in a busy hospital. I don't want to spoil the book for anyone, but the familial relationships in the story I found were incredibly moving towards the end.

To explain my rating of this book, although there was a lot of elements of this book which I enjoyed, it did take me a while to get into it. I had no problems with the book being told from so many different points of view, in fact it was more interesting that way, however, each one of the characters seemed to either a) hate Silvia; or b) be completely ambivalent about her so I started to wonder why they were even there.The only niggle I can identify is that one of the character’s sections is written in the style of their Jamaican accent (Winnie the nurse). The story centres on Silvia, who is in a coma following a fall from a balcony, the setting is predominantly the hospital and the narrators are a series of visitors Silvia has over a period of time. Then, there were other aspects which really irritated me, such as the VERY OVERUSED dialect of Winnie. As the story unfolds, we learn that each of these people has a different view of who Silvia Shute is and what she means to them differs vastly.