It was some time ago that I started reading Louise Candlish’s latest book Since I Don’t Have You. I started it, got to just page 41, felt so upset that I had to put it down until I could stop blubbing.
I have periodically picked it up and put it down again over the past six months or so, but only recently felt brave enough to try and finish it. It is so much more than just a story about loss, but I think it touched a still very raw nerve with me, which has made it nearly impossible to finish to be honest.
I can’t begin to tell you how deeply the story has moved me. It is so beautifully written and such a tragic, heartbreaking tale that I found I couldn’t read it on the commute to and from work, because I was almost constantly in tears….
Everyone knows how much I adore my niece and even though I wouldn’t ever presume to compare the feelings I have for her, with how her mother feels for her – it is the strength of those very feelings that makes me scared, constantly, that something bad might some day happen to her. I panic about everything – and feel an overwhelming sense of anger that someone someday might hurt her.
Throughout reading this book, I kept on thinking about my niece, and I am pretty sure the author drew upon her feeling for her own daughter to craft such an exquisitely real and incredibly believable story.
I can’t really tell you too much about it without revealing the pivotal point in the story - but I can tell you this is one of the most stunning books I have ever read. I don’t really know about many books outside of the stories about shoes and shagging that I normally read, so I don’t have a huge library of titles to compare it to – but if I said it reminded me a bit of The Lovely Bones, After You’d Gone and Anybody Out There? that might help.
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