{"id":5657,"date":"2015-03-09T11:20:38","date_gmt":"2015-03-09T11:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5657"},"modified":"2015-03-16T11:25:32","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T11:25:32","slug":"the-girl-in-the-red-coat-by-kate-hamer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5657","title":{"rendered":"The Girl in the Red Coat by Kate Hamer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Faber 5 March 2015 <\/strong><\/p>\n

384pp, hardback, \u00a312.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018So sometimes the very worst thought becomes a train that doesn\u2019t stop.<\/em><\/p>\n

The thought: Was it my fault? Was it my fault? Was it my fault? Was it my fault? Was it my fault? Was it my fault? Was it my fault? Was it my fault? Was it my fault?<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n

This is a story about faith, and about faith-healing; about what it means both to be an ordinary mother and daughter, and to be slightly out of the ordinary.<\/p>\n

A mother\u2019s worst nightmare:\u00a0 you lose your young daughter at a storytelling festival.\u00a0 She has gone missing before, lapsing into what sounds like the epileptic\u2019s petit mal.\u00a0 <\/em>Always, before, you have found her – fast asleep under a hedge, or curled up in a corner.\u00a0 What you don\u2019t know is that she has a special power, the laying on of hands to heal.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t know it either, though she recognizes the sensation when it happens.<\/p>\n

The world being what it is, someone has noticed this power, and wants it for his own ends.<\/p>\n

So begins a tale of separation and kidnapping, in which both Beth, the mother, and Carmel, the daughter, feel responsible.\u00a0 After all, single-mother Beth was being too protective, and Carmel had grown tired of this.\u00a0 Needless to say, the story hinges upon the harmless actions of a friend who has no means of knowing that there is a man around who is hunting for a healer through whom he can make his living.<\/p>\n

Sensitive 8-year-old Carmel is an attractive child.\u00a0 The reader guns for her, as she tries to make sense of what is happening.\u00a0 She has hidden from her mother, and then can\u2019t find her.\u00a0 A figure comes up to her out of the fog at the end of the festival and says he\u2019s her grandfather (whom she\u2019s never met), that her mother has had an accident and he\u2019s taking her home.\u00a0 From there, she is taken to a weird locked house and then, drugged, to America, on the passport of another girl, whose name she refuses to take.\u00a0 Wherever she goes, she writes her real name and a few details on anything she can lay her hands on (once tying to a tree a snippet of the T-shirt she was wearing), and thinks of her mother.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Beth struggles with guilt, distress and failure, but somehow keeps hoping.\u00a0 With painful slowness, over many years, she finds something else to do while waiting to be a mother again.\u00a0 This includes befriending her ex-husband\u2019s new partner.<\/p>\n

Adult behaviour and what children notice are at the heart of this book.\u00a0 Carmel says at one point: \u2018I suddenly feel very tired about all the arguments and falling out and shouting and clothes coming out of windows that adults do right over your head, as if you\u2019re just the mouse on the floor and don\u2019t understand.\u00a0 \u201cJust a little tiff me and your mum are having,\u201d they say, even when their voices sounded like they were going to kill each other with knives.\u2019<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t reveal the ending.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t the most horrifying, or indeed the most imaginative, of books in this genre, but forthright, loyal Carmel stays in the mind.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/p>\n

A mother\u2019s worst nightmare: you lose your young daughter at a storytelling festival. She has gone missing before, lapsing into what sounds like the epileptic\u2019s petit mal. Always, before, you have found her – fast asleep under a hedge, or curled up in a corner. What you don\u2019t know is that she has a special power, the laying on of hands to heal. She doesn\u2019t know it either, though she recognizes the sensation when it happens. But, the world being what it is, someone has noticed this power, and wants it for his own ends […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5657"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5826,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5657\/revisions\/5826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}