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

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Each chapter is about an individual character, often running as their own monologue of their thoughts about Silvia or the things they have to say to her. Although I loved Winnie and Cassie as people, I thought other points of view were very stereotypical and unnecessary so that is why I gave this book 2 stars. I didn’t like many of the characters apart from Winnie and Cassie (and Willow), but it was interesting to read how their stories interacted as they talked with Silvia - their friend, ex-wife, employer, mother and patient - who was in intensive care in a coma. I'm a big fan of Dawn French and have read a few of her previous books, so I expected this book to be as good as the rest, how wrong I was ! Each brings their own issues and slowly reveals Sylvia's past, their issues and relationships with her bringing the reader into the know of just who Sylvia is.

The characters are all very well portrayed, and the only one I felt was perhaps played for laughs a little too much was Silvia's cleaner, Tia, although even she has her own little back story going on and so she isn't only there to be funny. The book is a mix of humour, sadness, tough issues, abuse, possessiveness, relationships, violence, suicidal intentions. 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. I think she’s fabulous and very funny and the only time I’ve ever been reprimanded on an airplane was when I was watching The Vicar of Dibley and laughing too loud.

When Dawn French wrote her first novel A Tiny Bit Marvellous I was eager to read it, looking forward to plenty of silly humour and those elusive-when-reading out loud laughs. The dialogue is comedic at times which I found to be a small reprieve from the slowness of this book. Then, there were other aspects which really irritated me, such as the VERY OVERUSED dialect of Winnie. Silvia has made some decisions in her life that her family doesn’t understand and, while she is lying in hospital, they take the occasion to address their grievances with her to her unmoving body. It's hard to have any action, except in flashbacks, when the whole novel takes place in a hospital room.

I understand that the whole point of the novel with its multiple storytellers is that we understand how multifaceted people are and that different people mean different things to different people, but there is no cohesiveness within the character of Silvia. I felt myself looking forward to her chapters and hoping that if I were unlucky enough to ever have to spend some time in hospital that I would be blessed with a nurse like Winnie.Penguin (Australia), whose “Australian” book is peppered with –ize endings, you’re better than this too. There was something magical (in realistic terms) about "A Tiny Bit Marvellous" and I feared she wouldn't be able to live up to this. 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. Some aspects I would rate very highly, and towards the end of the book, I was shouting internally that it couldn't possibly end satisfactorily (but it actually did, sort of, I think).

Ed has much mixed feelings for his ex wife, the things she has done and looking back on their relationship before she changed.

The fact of the matter is that the lady in the coma has ostracised almost everyone, and all of their lives have well and truly moved on without her. I had high expectations of this as the Sunday Times reviewer said (towards the end of 2012) that it was the best book she had read all year.