Publishing year: 2014
The book starts with a letter from a woman called Ellen to her husband Neil.
She used to be a doctor and owned a clinic with her husband, but something has happened. We are not sure if the husband is dead or if he has just left her. We also know that she is seeing a psychologist who tells her that it is normal to feel angry. I wonder why she should be angry.
Then we are introduced to another character, Vinnie, who is a taxi driver. Vinnie has two children, fourteen-year-old Kerry, and Finn, who must be about eight as he is having his first communion soon. At first, I thought that Vinnie was a widower, but from his mother’s comments I think that Paula, his wife, absconded, leaving him with the two children.
Vinnie drives Ellen to her physiotherapy clinic every Friday. They don’t talk much on the way. From the conversation Vinnie has with his best friend Kenny we learn that Ellen has an ugly scar in his face, and she has to use crutches to get around. So what happened to her? Did she have an accident? Was her husband involved somehow?
That Friday when Vinnie is driving Ellen back to her house, he feels overwhelmed by strange sensations. He feels clammy and his heart is beating too quickly. He is unable to say a word. Ellen then gets into the front and makes him breathe into a bag. Then she drives the taxi to the hospital, and when Vinnie wakes up, he is told that he has had a panic attack. Kenny is there and drives him back home where his mother is waiting. The woman thinks that he is too stressed out, and that is why he has snapped. Vinnie plans to have a couple of days off, and not the two weeks the doctor recommended.
I love when I like a book from the very beginning, and this is what is happening with this one. I am already hooked, and I want to know more about Ellen and Vinnie, and what will happen with them.
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