Even though Elly is older than me, much of her childhood resonates with familiarity - watching the Generation Game and shouting out the prizes in excitement, the magic of polaroid cameras, chocolate teacakes and doing the pools! Elly shares not just a deep and binding bond with her brother Joe, but also a sensitivity and awareness of the world that seems to separate them from the world of their peers. They are, in everything, a team. Spanning four decades, from 1968 onwards, this is the story of a fabulous but flawed family and the slew of ordinary and extraordinary incidents that shape their everyday lives. Urma să ne vedem, o singură dată – cel puțin în copilărie -, înainte ca viețile noastre să se despartă precum un râu ce se separă în două brațe, săpând fiecare pământuri noi.” There is a cast of characters who are taken in by the family: An elderly man with a host of wild stories from his past and a woman who croons showtunes and is most comfortable with a feather boa. Was this so? Well, I started, and was utterly charmed by the child’s eye view of Elly, and her pet rabbit (named God) by her older brother, and by her instant childhood friendship with a fellow quirky and outsider little girl, Jenny Penny. I was fine with the talking rabbit, as a young child’s imagination is unfettered, and believes many things which can’t be true (we tell ourselves later) Though the Jenny Penny coin moment did raise some disquiet, as if we were going to be plunging into magic realism – except it didn’t really go there.

Firstly, this is a fiction book of two halves. First half I was loving the book and would have given it five stars. Second half – I loved it less so three stars. Rather than go for the average I’ll keep the overall review at three stars. Good book, unusual but messy – I will explain further.With the loss of her best friend due to circumstance, Elly comes to rely on "god" for comfort and companionship and believes that the animal talks to her. Even though the rabbit frequently disappears, he reappears when she needs him the most, and Elly believes this is somehow magical. When a guest at the bed and breakfast runs over "god," killing him, Elly is devastated and forced to confront the chaotic events of her life seemingly alone.

When a life-changing incident occurs, and Elly mentions it to her older brother Joe in an off-handed way, he handles it the best he can and then gives her a gift, a rabbit that she names God. God talks to her, not in the obnoxious way of, say, TV’s Wilfred. Just a sentence or two that provides direction either from his mouth or her imagination.I resisted reading Winman’s book for a long time, as I feared that this might be somewhat winsome and a little too ‘Hollywood tidy feel-good’. Whyyyyyyy?!?!? Why do people publish these books? Why do critics RECOMMEND them?!? Why do I read them?!?!? I know the answer to the last question: because sometimes these things surprise you and you end up with a Room, which you think sounds dumb and potentially boring and then ends up amazing. It with this then that I personally feel that Winman has gone too far with her work. At first, I found her characters, lovely, warm quaint and feasibly British with all their little quirks of decades gone by. In hyper adulthood, Winman stretches her characterisation like it’s on elastic and the themes, storylines and people are stretched far too much, in my humble opinion, to be believed and recognisable.

Elly, her brother Joe and her childhood friend Jenny Penny are all outsiders - not the angry and embittered kind, though, but the kind who know they are in some small way different, unique, set apart. They, their family, and the friends who become a part of that extended family may be fictional, but they have the immediacy and honesty and vibrancy of real people, and their lives have the ring of a true story. They are flawed, passionate, muddled, baggage-laden, generous, tragic, vibrant, good, above all human. They are the people we know, the people we are, the people with whom we want to surround ourselves. Narațiunea este expusă din perspectiva protagonistei Elly, care își înșiruie povestea pornind din copilărie (începând cu 1968) și ajungând la maturitate (începând cu 1995). Aceasta ne dezvăluie momentele ce au marcat viața sa și a celor dragi ei, abordând teme precum legăturile puternice de familie, prietenia de durată, copilăria marcată de momente frumoase, dar și traumatizante, dragostea în toate formele ei de manifestare, pierderea și regăsirea de-a lungul vieții.Sorry. This review contains a mini spoiler but I couldn't work out how to hide it so if you don't want any giveaway info you'd better ignore this one. However if you are continuing to read, thanks. Acest roman a fost în mare parte o adevărată delectare literară. Autoarea reușește să pună în lumină relațiile familiale și inter-umane, cu toate privilegiile și carențele pe care acestea le presupun. Mi-a plăcut mult și felul în care sunt conturate personajele : vii, credibile și umane.