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

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I started this book with little expectation regarding the execution but with high hopes. I knew that the novel was supposed to be quite morbid but I imagined that with Dawn French behind the keyboard, there was sure to be level of humour, and in this I suppose I wasn't wrong. Un vantaggio però c'è, nella solitudine, e cioè che attraverso di lei tutto acquista un fascino particolare. Hai così disperatamente bisogno di vedere un po' di bellezza per mitigare tutto lo schifo che hai attorno, che gli alberi finiscono per essere più verdi, il sole più caldo e il pane più buono di quanto non lo fosse quando pensavi di essere felice, e per niente solo. È come se il mondo m'invitasse a uscire a giocare - e indossa il suo vestito migliore." The novel is held together by Silvia's Jamaican nurse, Winnie. She treats Silvia with the repect she gives all her patients and is the only one with no axe to grind, no anger, hate or questions but only wishes good things for Silvia. She is a totally professional caring person. Really enjoyable and highly recommended. Dawn French is a wonderful writer - witty, wise and poignant Daily Mail (London) As the title reveals, the story circles around Silvia, who is lying unconscious in a hospital intensive care unit. We meet her ex-husband, her estranged daughter, her best friend, her cleaner and her nurse, who all talk to the sleeping Silvia, revealing what has happened in the past. All, except the kindly nurse, have their axes to grind with the unconscious patient, who by all accounts isn't a very nice person. Or is she just misunderstood?

Fantastic, passionate, compassionate, so much wisdom, a lot of humour, very real and credible' BERNARDINE EVARISTO The setting takes place mostly in suite 5 which is Silvia's room in hospital. The world building is alright. The memories of each visitor help set the story. The internationally bestselling author and acclaimed comedic actress Dawn French makes her American literary debut with this riveting novel of secrets, forgiveness, guilt, and love. She is frank about the challenges at the other end of this line, too, with her own daughter, now 21 and testing her wings. "She's at college, in the same county as me – far enough away to be in her own digs, but home every weekend, with a big pile of laundry, ready for Sunday lunch and a good row!" Another huge belly laugh. "You're very connected, but you mustn't control too much, you mustn't interfere too much. It's time for me to take my hands off the reins, but how do you know when to do that? You just kind of feel your way through it, and you war a little bit, all the way through … I have a theory that the reason you have the wars is so that the eventual tearing is not too unbearable. You'd die of sorrow, if you didn't already have a bit where you'd gone, 'oh go on then! Go on and make your own way!'" And again she laughs. She and Henry have both described their parting as involving a year of concerted effort to be kind, and to end up "as chums, as we had started, if you like". Perhaps this is true, and very impressive if so; perhaps there is a good helping of wish fulfilment, or a united front for the media. Whatever the case, both are now seeing other people, Henry a theatre producer, and French a charity worker who used to work with her mother, and who also had, somewhat to her surprise (given how much of a mainstay she has been in the BBC light entertainment schedules for the last 30 years), never seen her on screen.

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When Dawn French wrote her first novel [[A Tiny Bit Marvellous by Dawn French]] I was eager to read it, looking forward to plenty of silly humour and those elusive-when-reading out loud laughs. I was disappointed unfortunately, and actually came away from the book feeling annoyed with the characters and quite discouraged and depressed somehow. So, I approached her new novel with a little trepidation, unsure as to whether she deserved a second chance. I'm glad I gave her the benefit of the doubt! She has also, over the past three or so years, spent a lot of time dissecting the nature of marriage. When she was writing her novel (which begins with a visit from Silvia's ex-husband, still trying to work out what the power relationships were in their marriage, how they capsized) she was acting alongside Alfred Molina in BBC2 sitcom Roger and Val Have Just Got In. Set in real time, in the half hour when they get home from work every day, it is "a piece about the intricacies, and the smallness of a marriage," the day-to-day glue, particularly when, as in the case of Roger and Val, they are in the process of surviving the death of a baby, distracting each other, as French puts it, "with play and constant blether". French has described the sitcom as "like stealing money from the comedy department to make a drama"; it was reviewed in this paper as "not … comedy as we know it, but Roger & Val manages to mix beautifully written dialogue with a quiet observational humour that can nevertheless leave the viewer gasping for air"; French's performance was one of the best of her career. Although French didn't write the sitcom (twins Beth and Emma Kilcoyne did that), the idea for it was hers, developed while her real-life, 25-year marriage to Lenny Henry was breaking up. Reading this has increased the respect I hold for Dawn French. I never read her first book but was interested in story of her second.

Though there was the underlying sense of morality there was a level of humour through the events that occured within Suite 5. Unfortunately I just felt it was all too forced. This second novel by Dawn French is easy to read but in the early parts difficult to interweave the various contributions of the narrators into a cohesive piece of work. Persevere, it is worth it. Silvia Shute has fallen three floors from a balcony. She is in intensive care in a coma on life-support including mechanical ventilation. She is the younger sister of the eccentric Jo. They lost their mother at a young age and their army-trained father went off the rails. Sylvia divorced dependable Ed after showing little love for him or their two children, Jamie and Cassie who after leaving home had no love or respect for their mother. Oh Dear Silvia is the second novel by British comedienne/actress, and now author, Dawn French. I had seen glowing praise for her debut novel, A Tiny Bit Marvellous, so I was delighted to receive this book for review to decide for myself whether Dawn is as good an author as she is a comedienne. A matchless lover? A supreme egotist? A selfless martyr? A bad mother? A cherished sister? A selfish wife? Next up is Jo, the hippy, confused sister who thinks that she can magically make Silvia wake up using who-knows-what strange methods of burning sage and lighting candles. In talking to her sister's inert body, Jo shows her misunderstanding of a normal human relationship and although I started to feel a little sorry for her, I also wanted to shake her and tell her to let the nurses/doctors do their job and stop trying to do strange experiments.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. There was something magical (in realistic terms) about "A Tiny Bit Marvellous" and I feared she wouldn't be able to live up to this. And indeed, this novel is very different from "A tiny bit marvellous"; so much so that you feel slightly confused in the beginning. Is it a comedy? Can you even laugh about this subject (yes, you can, to a certain extent)? Is it a drama? Or a thriller? But I should have known I could relax: Dawn French is an excellent writer, and you're safe in her hands. For Silvia hides a secret. One she can never tell. And as her visitors congregate, so the truth about Silvia is slowly revealed. There are some subplots, some improbable and others rather repetitive. The circumstances surrounding the ill-tempered, violent, possessive Irish Cat (a GP),are an important part of the novel, yet do have some improbable features. The descriptions of her native Connemara are attractively portrayed.

Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives. I love Dawn French! I think she is such a funny woman!! I was so happy to have won a copy of her fiction book entitled Oh Dear Silvia from Goodreads. However, once I started reading the book, it became apparent that I wasn't going to enjoy it. Now she's unconscious in a hospital bed, at the mercy of the mad friends and crazy relatives who have come to visit. Her beleaguered ex-husband, her newly independent daughter, her West Indian nurse, her bohemian sister, her best friend, her enthusiastic housekeeper, and others all share a piece of their collective mind with the complex woman—the bad mother, the cherished sister, the selfish wife, the matchless lover, the egotist, the martyr—they think they know.

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The visitors Silvia receives range from her sister, daughter, ex-husband and friend through to her housekeeper and nurse. I’ll admit that I found it quite difficult to keep up with who everyone was, even in the later stages of the book I had to keep reminding myself who was who and what kind of relationship they had with Silvia largely because the chapters were quite short. Nevertheless every character had merit, and I liked the way each character and their visits throughout the novel helped you learn something new about Silvia, and them, and effectively shapes how you feel as a reader towards Silvia as the book evolves. French masterfully takes us through Sylvia's life. We change our view of her and the people around her as the book progresses, and by the end, we wish all could have been explained, made right. Though there are quite a few narrators, they were all very distinctive and even if it didn't have their names at the beginning of each chapter, you'd know who they were. I was very impressed with the authenticity of each character, as they were all so very different, though you could still sense that some of the characters were connected (Ed and his daughter). I was also impressed with the depth of each character - the character building through the chats to Silvia in the suite was very well done. We get to see many different sides to the characters as they go through various emotional stages. Interaction between the conscious characters was also fantastic, particularly towards the end. I also enjoyed the use of dialect.

Silvia is someone who admittedly isn’t always likable; she isn’t liked by all of her visitors and I enjoyed these sub-plots to the story and felt there were plenty of surprises along the way. There were times when this novel is laugh-out-loud funny (Silvia’s sister literally tries everything to get her sister to come out of the coma including getting a stripper into the hospital room), yet there are times when the novel is also very dark and moving. I found the blurb misleading. I was expecting something like an in-depth analysis of Sylvia Schute from a variety of angles, but for the most part the novel is far more concerned with everybody else. The fact of the matter is that the lady in the coma has ostracised almost everyone, and all of their lives have well and truly moved on without her. There are seven other protagonists! Silvia just so happens to be the common denominator. I wished for a little less use of dialect in the nurse looking after Silvia, though I have to admit the housekeepers malapropisms (due to her sons teaching her the wrong words in English) were hilarious. A little dialect goes a long way, and in some parts it's too heavy for reading pleasure.I love the idea behind this book - The whole book takes place in Coma Suite 5, where Silvia, a friend, lover and mother lies in a coma. The story is told through several people - her ex-husband (Ed), her sister (Jo), her daughter (Cassie), her 'lover' (Cat), her housekeeper (Tia) and her nurse (Winnie). There isn't really a progressive plot as such, but this is more of a collection of memories, wishes and thoughts have about Silvia and how she has changed each narrator's life. I find books like this very intriguing, so I was interested in seeing what each person had to say.