Oh Dear Silvia: The gloriously heartwarming novel from the No. 1 bestselling author of Because of You

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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. All of the visitors, with the exception of her nurse who never knew her and her housekeeper, Silvia seems universally disliked.

Winnie was very optimistic and talked to Silvia as if she was awake and chatting back which made me realise how difficult it must be to work as a nurse on such a ward with no interaction. Most of these visitors are absolutely bloody nuts and should be in some kind of institute themselves. I've tried for weeks to get into this book, but the going from character to character, never sticking to one train of thought, just made my head hurt.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. I did not, however, think that the book was 'side-splitting' or 'hilarious', which were terms used on the front cover to describe the book. Winnie goes on something of a journey through the story, as do all the characters really as they each grow and change through the book, as result of Silvia's mysterious coma and their own responses to that. It's ironic that Silvia is the focus of this novel, because as a reader, I never got a sense of who she was or what exactly motivated her actions.

As I am meant to, I started the book feeling certain ways about several characters and slowly and with revelations suddenly found victims and their controllers were switching places, reasons for behaviours were shed light on, misconceptions were cleared. I spent the majority thinking, well this isn't funny, she'd never be allowed to light candles in a real hospital because the alarms would go off and she'd be chucked out on her ear by security.That said, I am keen to discuss it with my friends and coworkers, who I know were eager to give it a go. That said, the characters are distinctive and you will love and/or hate them each in turn (I liked Cassie the best). Just like in "A Tiny Bit Marvellous", family ties take up a lot of space in this book, and is dealt with in a way that is both raw and true. Badly written, unbelievable plot, intensely irritating and most definitely not a 'hilarious' or 'side splitting, darkly humorous' read as the quotes say on the front of the book.

I have previously read her autobiography, Dear Fatty as well as her first fictional novel, A Tiny Bit Marvellous, both of which I loved and gave 5 stars without question.Supposedly the reason why Silvia blocked out her whole family and started ignoring them was because Cat shows up one night, with the body of her ex-husband in her car, high on drugs. The story is told from the first person point of view of six characters: nurse Winnie, ex-husband Ed, sister Jo, housekeeper Tia, friend Cat and daughter Cassie. The resolution that then came together over the second half of the book did not drag or feel superfluous and the ending was to be expected. To explain my rating of this book, although there was a lot of elements of this book which I enjoyed, it did take me a while to get into it. As is quite common in French's writing, “Oh Dear Silvia” is quite simple to read but is grounded in reality with a number of life's hard truths contained amongst the often humorous prose.

Cassie struggles to even look at her mother despite the critical condition she is in, Jamie refuses to acknowledge her and Jo, Jo is a wild card, chaos, dramas and very much all about her as she tries some very questionable things to "wake" her sister up. I really wanted to like this book and in fact I had mentioned it enough times that my boyfriend bought this for my 21st birthday (3 years ago, oh my goodness). I was also impressed with the depth of each character - the character building through the chats to Silvia in the suite was very well done. Silvia, who seemingly without reason has rejected her whole family, is not a very likeable person, as it appears.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.