I actually liked Cassie's character and had immediate sympathy for her but my problem with her character was the timeline. Shunned by her daughter Cassie and son Jamie, cared for by nurse Winnie, visited by Tia her cleaner, Ed her ex husband and her eccentric sister Jo. It starts slowly and the reader is introduced one by one to Sylvia's visitors ( Tia was a brilliant character to lift the mood of the book)and I wondered where exactly the plot was going, but right in the middle the book took a completely different direction and from then on i couldn't put this book down! The eponymous Silvia is lying in hospital in a coma after having fallen off her balcony, landing three floors below. She is best-known for starring in and writing her comedy sketch show, French and Saunders, alongside her comedy partner Jennifer Saunders, and for playing the lead role of Geraldine Granger in the sitcom The Vicar of Dibley.

It did feel to me as if the author was aiming to up her word count by using this device and when she ran out of steam with one character she could always move on to the next one.The use of a silent central character was an inspired choice, as all action revolves around her and the choices that have led to this point are revealed piece by piece throughout the novel. As expected, there were some hilarious comedy moments from French (I particularly liked the scene with the 'healing' animals - I was laughing out loud!

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. The Silvia of the title is a lady in a coma in hospital and although she is the central character of the story we don't really actually hear from her and, instead, it's the cast of characters who come to visit her who create the character of Silvia for us.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. As the title reveals, the story circles around Silvia, who is lying unconscious in a hospital intensive care unit.

Summary: After being disappointed by Dawn French's first novel I found this a much better experience, moving and somehow, for a story about a patient in a coma, rather uplifting. 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. Her first three novels, A Tiny Bit Marvellous, Oh Dear Silvia and According to YES, are all Sunday Times bestsellers.

Although her character initially provides a balance against the others who actually know Silvia by the end her role is crucial, not just for Silvia but for many of her visitors too. It's a story about loss and saying goodbye, but it's also a story about finding the truth and finding love. I couldn't tell you what genre this book is because i found it dark, funny, moving it was so much more than i was expecting after reading some of the mixed reviews. Perhaps it was the omniscient point of view, mixed in with the first person narratives of Silvia's nearest and dearest. 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.

She is visited by Ed, her ex-husband, Jo, her older sister, Winnie, her West Indian nurse, Tia, her housekeeper, Cat, her lover and "friend," and Cassie, her estranged daughter. I don't want to spoil the book for anyone, but the familial relationships in the story I found were incredibly moving towards the end. 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.It's hard to have any action, except in flashbacks, when the whole novel takes place in a hospital room.