Things I Want My Daughters to Know
Elizabeth Noble, 2008
HarperCollins
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061686597
Summary
How do you cope in a world without your mother?
When Barbara realizes time is running out, she writes letters to her four daughters, aware that they'll be facing the trials and triumphs of life without her at their side. But how can she leave them when they still have so much growing up to do?
Take Lisa, in her midthirties but incapable of making a commitment; or Jennifer, trapped in a stale marriage and buttoned up so tight she could burst. Twentysomething Amanda, the traveler, has always distanced herself from the rest of the family; and then there's Hannah, a teenage girl on the verge of womanhood about to be parted from the mother she adores. But by drawing on the wisdom in Barbara's letters, the girls might just find a way to cope with their loss. And in coming to terms with their bereavement, can they also set themselves free to enjoy their lives with all the passion and love each deserves?
This heartfelt novel by bestselling author Elizabeth Noble celebrates family, friends...and the glorious, endless possibilities of life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 22, 1968
• Where—High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England
• Education—B.A., Oxford University
• Currently—Wonersh, Guildford, Surrey, England
Elizabeth Noble was born in Buckinghamshire, England. She was educated in England and Canada, where the family lived for several years in Toronto.
In 1990 she graduated from St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University, with a B.A. (Honors) in English language and literature. But it was the diploma (Intensive Secretarial) that she was awarded by the typing school above the Italian café in Covent Garden that got her into her chosen career— publishing. Over a six year period she worked in the editorial, marketing, publicity, and sales departments of several big publishing houses—moving every couple of years, once she had made a big enough mess in the filing (note to bewildered successors: check under "m" for miscellaneous). This makes her a tricky author. She speaks fluent publishing.
She took a career break — she called it "retired" — to have her two daughters, after her marriage in 1996. When her youngest daughter was ready to go to nursery school, and real work beckoned, she decided to try what she had been threatening to do for years, and wrote a hundred pages of The Reading Group.
Then it took her nine months to work up the courage to send it to an agent. The Reading Group was published in the UK in January 2004 and went straight to the number-one position in (London's) Sunday Times's Fiction Bestseller list. She was supposed to be signing stock in London bookshops the day the chart was announced, but she had grown bored and was trying on trousers—they didn't fit—in a ladies' clothing store when the call came. So she was literally caught with her pants down.
The book has since sold almost a quarter of a million copies in the UK. But the other day her elder daughter, Tallulah, told her she would rather she got a job in a chicken plucking factory because then she would be at home more, so she doesn't think there is much danger of her getting conceited.
She has recently finished her second novel— there were no vacancies at the chicken plucking factory—and begun her third.
She lives with her husband and their ungrateful children in a haunted vicarage in "the safest village in Surrey," England. They obviously don't know about the ghost.
Extras
From a 2005 interview with Barnes & Noble:
• Researching my novels has changed my life. This year alone, in the name of research, I have abseiled 100 feet off of a viaduct, learnt how to gamble, and danced on stage in a Las Vegas show. At the ripe old age of 36, I've finally realized that you are only here once, and I'm never going to say no to a new experience again (so long as its legal!).
• I am perpetually engaged in a quest to be thinner, fitter, have better hair, and look more stylish. I'm usually losing.
• Each morning, I pump up the volume on the stereo and dance about the living room with my five- and seven-year-old daughters. It's the best ten minutes of every day.
• I am incredibly close to my parents and siblings. We have gone in very different directions—my brother teaches mathematics in France, and my sister is a midwife—but we all have a strong sense of family.
• My friends are hugely important to me, and spending time with them is a precious part of my life.
• I like chocolate, floral white wines, cinema, and being lazy. I love U.S. import TV—Sex and the City, The West Wing, Desperate Housewives, and Six Feet Under (God bless HBO!).
• I dislike almost all politicians, pushy parents, and bad manners. And I hate, hate, hate cell phones, and the fact that they mean you can never be ‘unavailable.'
• I unwind in a hot bath with a big glass of wine, and my ultimate luxury would be 12 hours sleep a night (but my children do not agree).
• When asked what book most influenced her career as a writer, here's her answer:
A thousand books have influenced my life as a writer...but since you're making me, I'm going to name the classic A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, which I read as a girl and remember as the first novel that gripped me and made me say, as I reluctantly got to the end, "I want to write one day." I absolutely loved, and felt for, Francie Nolan. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble and the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Noble (The Reading Group) hits her stride in her tearjerker fourth novel. Before Barbara Forbes, a mother of four, succumbs to terminal cancer, she leaves words of wisdom for her four daughters in the form of letters to each of them. In the year following Barbara's death, her daughters draw strength from her words and from each other as they move forward with their lives. Lisa, the eldest, is advised to "let someone look after [her]" for a change. Jennifer, "fragile and hard to reach," struggles with an unraveling marriage. Free-spirited Amanda is thrown for a loop by a family secret, and teenaged Hannah, experiencing her first taste of rebellion, is reminded that she still has a lot of growing up to do. Though Barbara's life-is-short aphorisms are nothing new, her sharp wit and distinctive voice is a nice complement to the four nuanced stories of coping with death.
Publishers Weekly
Four sisters come to terms with the death of their mother over the course of one year, buoyed and buffeted by the letters and journal she left behind to guide them. Eldest daughter Lisa reaches a moment of truth with her boyfriend-to marry or not. Stoic Jennifer is at a crossroads in her marriage, complicated by the decision whether to have a baby. Amanda, consumed with wanderlust, wonders why she's always running away and considers what it would take for her to stay. And the youngest, 16-year-old Hannah, struggles to navigate her turbulent teenage years, mourning her mother while trying to comfort her father. Noble's fourth novel (after Alphabet Weekends) is a bittersweet yet ultimately uplifting story of love, family, and the bonds between mothers and daughters and among sisters. Letters and journal entries are sprinkled throughout the narrative, expanding the novel's focus to include the family's history from the very beginning and making for a sweeping, engaging, and comfortable women's fiction choice. Highly recommended for all public libraries.
Amy Brozio-Andrews - Library Journal
A beyond-the-grave, mother/daughter heartstring-tugger, from the shrewd British novelist (Alphabet Weekends, 2007, etc.). No crying and no black at the funeral, insists Barbara, a 60-year-old mother of four girls, in the first of her to-be-read-after-I'm-gone letters to her children. Noble's story of how Barbara's daughters (and second husband) survive her premature death from cancer, aided by farewell letters and a journal, is an unashamed tear-jerker, with its lovable-but-flawed parent sending caring advice into the future to her four grieving but eventually happy girls. Noble assigns each of the main characters a more or less trumped-up problem or secret to be resolved, after which contentment reliably follows. Commitment-phobic eldest child Lisa mucks up her relationship with nice Andy by having an affair and not really wanting to accept Andy's marriage proposal, but she ends up walking down the aisle. For possibly infertile Jennifer, with her cooling marriage, all is resolved by a sex-fueled holiday and a proper chat, after which she quickly becomes pregnant. Amanda, the wanderer, needs to stop running away, digest the fact that her father was neither of Barbara's husbands and open up to flawless new boyfriend Ed. And young Hannah simply requires some space in which to grow up. A comfortable if formulaic and sentimental scenario, delivered in a light tone with professionalism and a straight face.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What would you say in a letter to your daughter? What advice would you give?
2. How does the author succeed in portraying a main character who never actually appears in the novel?
3. Is it selfless or selfish for Barbara to reveal what she does?
4. What does each character learn about herself and what do they learn from Barbara?
5. How does each character handle grief?
6. What does it mean to have a "good death?"
7. How is each sister's relationship with her mother different?
8. Do you think it is important to keep a journal? Why or why not?
9. Is it okay to read another person's diary, letters, journal after they die? Why or why not? If you found someone's diary, would you read it?
10. What is the best advice your mother gave to you or what do you wish she'd told you?
11. Does birth order play a role in family dynamics and did the sister's here display characteristics that you'd expect from the eldest, middle, and youngest? Why or why not?
12. How do you think Barbara's daughters have been affected by their mother's romantic/marital history, and what role may her divorce have played in their own development and attitudes?
13. How do you view the author's portrayal of men within the narrative? In particular, how does Mark's reaction to his wife's death, in the context of his role as father and stepfather, affect you?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
top of page