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    Oh Dear Silvia: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Oh Dear Silvia: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Oh Dear Silvia: A Novel
    Ebook304 pages6 hours

    Oh Dear Silvia: A Novel

    By Dawn French

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Oh Dear Silvia by Dawn French, the celebrated English actress, bestselling author, and comedian, is the clever, touching, and compelling story of one mysterious woman trapped in a coma after a fall from a balcony.
     
    Now, lying unconscious in a hospital bed, Silvia is plagued by a stream of often funny and sometimes poignant visits from friends and family, each of whom knows a different piece of the puzzle that is Silvia Shute.
     
    And, as she lies there listening to all of her visitors, the dark and terrible secret she’s been hiding for years emerges.
     
    Dawn French's Oh Dear Silvia is an emotionally resonant and riveting tale of secrets, forgiveness, remorse, guilt, and love.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMay 28, 2013
    ISBN9780062271822
    Unavailable
    Oh Dear Silvia: A Novel

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    Reviews for Oh Dear Silvia

    3/5

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    • 4/5
      This book was quite a good read. I liked the style of writing by comedienne Dawn French, but I'm not quite sure that the storyline worked in her format. Silvia is a coma in the intensive ward after a fall from her balcony. The story is told in the voices of those who visit, family and close friends, her nurse, and my favourite her cleaning lady. Each reveals their secrets and their version of the story. It is a little difficult to put the narratives together, but perhaps that was her intention as it shows that each person knows a different Silvia.
    • 5/5
      "Oh Dear Silvia" is an emotionally rich and ultimately satisfying novel. As the story unfolds through the vignettes of each person's visit, we see there is far more to the titular character than her family and even her friends can know. There are flashes of the kind of humor fans of Ms. French have come to expect from her work. It is the heart and depth contained in this novel that make it so compelling.
    • 2/5
      I received this book for free through the Goodreads Firstreads program.

      (This review can also be found on my blog The (Mis)Adventures of a Twenty-Something Year Old Girl).

      I love Dawn French! I think she is such a funny woman!! I was so happy to have won a copy of her fiction book entitled Oh Dear Silvia from Goodreads. However, once I started reading the book, it became apparent that I wasn't going to enjoy it.

      Silvia is in a coma after falling from a balcony and hitting her head. Throughout her time in hospital, she is visited by family, her best friend, her ex-husband, her nurse, and her cleaner. Each has their own story to tell however odd it may be. Throughout this book, we will find out about who Silvia is.

      The title of this book really works. After reading the book, I would say it definitely fits well with the story.

      The cover of this book is quite bland. The tree on the cover of the book does have significance, but it's just rather boring. It wouldn't entice me to pick up this book to see what it's about. Surely, the cover could've been a bit more decorative.

      The setting takes place mostly in suite 5 which is Silvia's room in hospital. The world building is alright. The memories of each visitor help set the story.

      I found the pacing of Oh Dear Silvia to be extremely and painfully slow. At some points, I found myself skim reading the especially boring parts. I couldn't wait for this book to be over. There's not even one bit in this book where the pacing picks up. There's no real plot in this book, so there's definitely no plot twists. The pacing definitely lets this book down.

      The dialogue is comedic at times which I found to be a small reprieve from the slowness of this book. Ed's dialogue really bored me.

      The characters are well-developed which I found to be a relief. Each chapter of the book is told by someone who knows Silvia. The main characters that have their own chapters being Ed, Cat, Jo, Cassie, Winnie, and Tia. Ed is by far the most boring character that could ever be in a book. All he mostly talks about is his boring trees. Whilst I did find him to be a well-developed character, I found him extremely dull and found myself wishing that he'd just stop talking. Winnie and Tia were my favourite characters. Winnie has a big heart, and it really comes across in this book. Tia is from Indonesia so has a hard time pronouncing Silvia's surname which always made me laugh!! I found Tia and Jo to be the characters that brought the humour, and they delivered! Cat is the high strung character, and Cassie is the angry daughter. Each character has a unique personality. Well done to Dawn French for making each character unique! Through each of the characters' stories, we learn more and more about Silvia.

      Even with the strong character personalities and comedic timing, this book still fell flat. I felt that this book was missing a plot. Oh Dear Silvia comes across more as a memoir about Silvia then anything else.

      I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone except those who need help falling asleep. Dawn French is great, but this book just didn't do it for me.
    • 2/5
      I saw Oh Dear Silvia: A Novel, by the amazing Dawn French and knew that I had to read it. I love Dawn French, and have since the first time I set eyes on her in the hilarious series Vicar of Dibley. From that time on, I watched her in every thing I could find. I read and enjoyed Dear Fatty. So of course I knew I had to read this. First of all, I looked at nothing but the author. I did not look at the book description or any reviews. I just took it for granted that I would be amused and find Oh Dear Silvia enjoyable.Sadly, this was not the case. I was more and more saddened as I read. A woman of sixty, friends and family gathered round her as she lay in a coma. How she came to be that way was unclear. What was sadly clear is that each of those who visited, seemed to be there more for themselves than for her. Guilt, anger and commitment to doing what was expected seemed to be the order of the day. The only one who lightened the tone of the book, and who seemed to care about poor Sylvia was the nurse, Winnie. Jo was fluttery and guilty and possibly somewhat relieved to be outliving her sister. Ed, the ex was just angry and unappealing, in my opinion. And the daughter? That might be what horrified me the most. A repulsive thing for the most part. The only thing that I could find compelling at all was that it felt like the truth. That at the end of the day, most people are just worried about themselves. We do die alone, no matter how we try to reject that as a possibility. The fact that Sylvia herself was a less than loving parent, sister and friend only made it worse.I am not glad I read it, but as I said, it is perhaps my own fault for not investigating further before requesting this book from Vine. Never assume.
    • 2/5
      A woman is in a coma after a fall from a balcony. The story is compromised of the visits of her ex husband, her housekeeper, her best friend, her eccentric sister and her estranged daughter. Through their visits we catch a glimpse of the real woman.
    • 5/5
      Oh my.
      I've read Dawn French's first book, "A Tiny Bit Marvellous", which made me howl out loud throughout and which was seriously funny and a tiny bit shocking.
      So when I picked up "Oh Dear Silvia", I expected more of the same - something light and humorous, something to make me laugh and forget.
      Instead what I got was the tale of a complex woman, one misunderstood by almost everyone in her life, told through the visitors to her hospital room, where she lies in a coma.
      French masterfully takes us through Sylvia's life. We change our view of her and the people around her as the book progresses, and by the end, we wish all could have been explained, made right.
      I wished for a little less use of dialect in the nurse looking after Silvia, though I have to admit the housekeepers malapropisms (due to her sons teaching her the wrong words in English) were hilarious. A little dialect goes a long way, and in some parts it's too heavy for reading pleasure.
      But I forgave all as this story winds to the end. If any of you have been with a seriously ill relative, sat by their bedside, tried to reach them, you will find this book calls to your heart.
      Highly recommended. A thoughtful read and one I wished could have gone on longer. Thank you, Ms. French. If any of you have been with a seriously ill relative, sat by their bedside, tried to reach them, you will find this book calls toyour heart.
    • 4/5
      A moving tale of Silvia's life falling apart, told through the visits of various friends and family to her bedside in intensive care after she has mysteriously fallen off her balcony. This is not at all what I was expecting from a comedienne like Dawn French, however, it was brilliant. The characters are very well written and the mystery draws you in. Thoroughly recommended.
    • 3/5
      It felt very odd to read a novel in which the main character never actually moves or speaks in real time. All of the action happens around Silvia, all of the other characters speak at instead of to her – and the reader is left to realize that these people can only seem to come to grips with their relationships to Silvia when she is not actively participating.Because of the lack of participation by the main subject of this book, I found it a bit flat. There is no real energy to it – other than the suspense as to when or if Silvia will wake up.What the reader is allowed to know about Silvia comes from her ex-husband, her children, her friend, her sister and a couple of others. (Except that a few times, we are allowed into Silvia’s actual thoughts and emotions in weird segues from the other characters – a move that didn’t work for me.)Despite that, there were some beautifully expressed reflections by the people whose lives have intersected with Silvia. Her ex-husband Ed: “There’s something about trees that’s too much bigger and older than all of us. We’ve all felt it one time or another. We have an instinctive reluctance to feeling so small and insignificant, so pathetically young. We all want to count, don’t we?” And: “Y’know, the God I don’t believe in? That one, who definitely isn’t there at all the important frightening moments in my life, but whom I still choose to address. Him? The same one I raise a little prayer to each night for you at the moment, Silvia. I give it a go, why not?” And even though I didn’t understand how we were suddenly in Silvia’s thoughts while actually in her friend Cat’s memories – this was an excellent description about the great changes in live and how they can unspool almost without us realizing it.“Silvia could sometimes barely believe she had surrendered so entirely, but in actual fact, like most of the ugly awkward stuff of life, it had happened in spurts of drama interspersed with great swathes of ordinary, harmful, flowing time which incrementally caused the great unjoinings, until now, when Silvia realized just how unconnected she is.” And how our life, any life, never stands alone. “Silvia. Her life force is fading, but right now, she is still alive, and where she lives, she is the pivot for them all. She is why they are circling around, collecting together to share however it is going to be. She has drawn them in.”I was disappointed by “Oh Dear Silvia” but still walk away with a few images that will stick with me.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this book in some places but skimmed and scanned in others. I loved the Tia character but found Jo a little inane. Cassie's relationship with her mother was very moving, as was her relationship with her own daughter. Good but not gripping.
    • 3/5
      Oh Dear Sylvia is the second novel by Dawn French, her first A Tiny Bit Marvellous, published in 2011, became a bestseller in the UK.The novel begins by introducing Ed who is seated by his ex-wife's hospital bed where Silvia rests, unresponsive and on life support after a severe head injury, with subsequent chapters shifting between the perspectives of Ed, Silvia's nurse (Winnie), housekeeper (Tia), partner (Cat), sister (Jo) and daughter (Cassandra). As each character spends time with Silvia, reminiscing about their respective relationships with her, they develop a portrait of a complicated woman for the reader. Just as you are sure you know and violently dislike Silvia, one of her visitors makes a stunning revelation that proves the old adage that you can never really know another person.I thought the way in which the author structured this novel was very clever. The plot is carefully constructed to reveal critical information with perfect timing, betraying secrets and truths that reflect not only on Silvia but also her visitors.The darker, serious elements of the story are tempered by the lighter, often farcical, moments, such as Jo's attempts at pet therapy and Tia's prattle about celebrity gossip, yet an undercurrent of grief is always present.I have to admit while I found Tia's muddled, and often accidentally profane, speech hilarious, I found Winnie's Jamaican patios very difficult to read. British, and American readers, might be more attuned to the accent and therefore more comfortable with the odd rhythm but it's not familiar to me, so I struggled with her chapters.While there are similarities in style between A Tiny Bit Marvellous and Oh Dear Sylvia, notably the multiple perspectives and French's irreverent style of humour, somewhat disappointingly, there is barely a hint of Dawn's distinct voice.Oh Dear Silvia is a come-tragedy which is hilarious, dark and moving in turn. Though it is not entirely what I expected from Dawn French the novel has its' own unique charm which should appeal to a broad audience.