2021 book 17

 Penelope Farmer's Goodnight Ophelia

So when I was rereading Charlotte Sometimes the other day, I discovered an ebook by Farmer I’d never heard of, a book written for adults, about a woman reflecting on her life while in the hospital dying of cancer, and decided to read it. And the very first page mentioned Wikipedia and I was like whaaaaaaat. She wrote this book five years ago! She’s been writing books ALL THESE YEARS (Charlotte Sometimes came out in 1969 and wasn’t even her first book)! I am definitely going to be looking for the others. Anyway, as mentioned, this book is the reflections of a dying woman, on her childhood in post-war England with her adoptive father, on her mother who left her, on her own parenthood and career and love life, on the mysteries of her identity, all trucking toward a frankly cringeworthy reveal (there are a lot of hints and the reader will figure it out, but hope they’re wrong). But I mostly loved this anyway? Or anyway, I really liked the narrative voice (hard for me not to love a narrator who loves Nancy Mitford). A-.