A marriage in retrospect

Marion is at her ex-husband's deathbed. Gradually we find out how her marriage unravelled.
This was a hard book to get into. The main character, Marion, is unlikeable with her selfish affairs ruining the lives of her whole family. I found the frequently changing viewpoints confusing, making the story-line disjointed. Janet Ellis is clearly an accomplished writer, with some evocative phrases, such as 'Death is stroking Michael's face' describing Marion's grief for her ex-husband. However, surely no hospital would leave life support machines unsupervised by a doctor for a weekend! So unrealistic that I couldn't read on after that part.

The narrative is mainly the viewpoint of Marion, wife to Michael, mother to Eddie and Sarah but it also provides chapters from Sarah, in the form of diary entries, and Michael and Eddie so you need to fix your bearings at each chapter. The story highlights the trudging domesticity of Marion as she looks after her family in the 70s and her longing for change and excitement through doomed affairs.
The timeline is mainly flashbacks as we are aware that Michael is in hospital with a terminal illness and Marion is laden with guilt at her indiscretions. I'm afraid I didn't feel any empathy with Marion, however. Perhaps this is because we get everyone's viewpoint so the identification is watered down.
The characters are well drawn and believable but because the emphasis is on the drudgery of Marion's life the narrative lacks a spark.

I wasnt sure what to expect from this book. It's quite an emotional book and I felt it to be harrowing a times. The narration was somewhat disjointed in parts, making it hard going at times. None the less, worth a read.

This book was not easy to read, not just for his rather oppressive atmosphere (some of it in a hospital ward with someone who is dying) but also because it moves quickly from the present to the 70s and from one character to another. But it was well written and shows us the dynamic of a failed family unit.
We have Marion Deacon a bored housewife, her gentle and supportive husband Michael and the two kids Sarah who is 14 and Eddie who is 7. Marion is not particularly likeable but maybe partly because we expect a lot more from a mother and wife?
She makes her own decisions which turned out to be selfish and disastrous and pays the consequences, the entire family pays for it and never really heals again. The crunch of the book reminded me of another complex book "Hausfrau" by Jill Alexander Essbaum. I can't tell you what the similarities are without revealing most of the plot.
Overall a rewarding read but that it requires some patience and concentration, not a light read for the beach.

Concentration is the key to this book!

Unfortunately not for me, way too much back and forth and jumbles of memories. I found this a complete struggle to keep up with. Very disjointed but that may get ironed out by final print. I gave myself a headache and eye strain reading it.

Totally baffling to be honest, not much clarification to who's memories are being portrayed so you think your reading one characters feelings but actually your wrong!

I didnt like the part when Michael is at the end of his life and having the machines turned off, no doctor would rush this for a weekend away!!!

Thank you to netgalley and John Murray Press for the ARC.

Passing the time whilst her husband Michael is slowly dying Marion looks back over her life. The narrative is a jumble of memories, triggered sometimes by the letters and photographs she takes with her when visiting, sometime just random thoughts. As the story progresses the thoughts of her husband and children are included too.
The story becomes very obvious but it is still an intriguing read.

It is difficult to unravel what is now and what is history but somehow instead of being extremely irritating I find it is like a thread drawing me further into the narrative.

I am sorry but this book is not for me. I found it to be too disjointed. It flips backwards and forwards in time too much. It made me lose interest in the story. Sorry.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

Literary fiction bat it’s best.Characters that drew me in complex family relations told from four points of view.An author I highly recommend.#netgalley #johnmurraypress

Beginning this book I wasn’t completely sure I was going to enjoy this read but how wrong I was! I was blown away by how beautifully written this story is, following the lives of Michael and Marion as he is dying, just days away from departing this world. Told from the perspectives of Michael and mainly Marion as well as their two children Sarah and Eddie, the reader is taken on a journey alternating between past and present , their lives held up for close inspection. The description of the minutiae of their lives is simply stunning and the characters personalities are acutely observed. It would seem the marriage is built on rocky foundations, causing Marion to seek fun and pleasure elsewhere and she comes across as a cold fish in terms of being a wife and mother making her rather unlikeable. I liked the way the author used Marion sitting at her husband’s beside looking at old photographs and letters to reveal this family’s backstory and the events that led to the disintegration of their family unit. The neighbour Sheila is a great character in this novel, depicted as the nosy interfering individual who is quite instrumental in Marion’s downfall. This is a moving, profoundly sad tale that took me by surprise with how outstanding the writing is and I can’t praise the author enough. This is a triumph and without a doubt one of my favourite books this year.Thoroughly recommend and thank you as always to the publisher and Netgalley for allowing me to read ahead of publication.

Thank you for allowing me to read an early copy of this book.

I would like to start by advising that I will not be providing a blog post or posting reviews to any other social media sites as I do not feel this would benefit the book or the author.

I did not enjoy this book at all. I found the writing very hard to follow and confusing a lot of the time which really distracted from the flow of the story. There was little clarification as to which character was being portrayed and at times I found that I thought I was still reading thoughts from one characters only to find the momentum had changed and I was reading something entirely different.

At one point I did consider not finishing the book but I carried on only to have a very unclear ending to the story. I don't understand why a character would be at her dying husbands bedside only to find they had separated years before. Where was he current partner?

Overall I found the book badly written and totally baffling.

Janet Ellis has provided us with a complex and at times, harrowing story of family dynamics. In Marion we meet a deeply flawed woman - a wife, a mother, a lover. A woman struggling with the minutiae of life, a woman who craves attention and to be desired. A woman threatened by her own daughter as she herself feels her own power and attractiveness fading away. Marion longs to be seen as more than a wife and mother. She is bored with her daily life and longs to feel the quickening of lust. Ellis manages to make Marion at once unlikeable, (she shamelessly reads her daughter's diary), and yet also as the plot develops, we begin to feel a connection with her that softens the edges of our dislike. Hints are dropped about a tragedy throughout this gorgeous book, and it is this that helps us observe Marion from a different perspective. She reflects on her life as her ex husband lies dying and there is no mawkish sentimentality, rather a no holds barred honesty. I loved how Ellis writes from Marion's daughter's perspective as well, and she captured the struggle of teenage girls so beautifully. The lack of confidence is something every girl and woman will remember, but also the clear sighted honesty of youth is portrayed beautifully. Sarah sees what her mother is unable to and ultimately tries to avert an ill-fated encounter. Sadly, the consequences of Marion's (and Sarah's) decisions are to end in tragedy. But the ending of this book gives us hope that forgiveness is possible even in the most difficult of circumstances. And perhaps, that begins with forgiving ourselves for the decisions we make. Complex, observational, sexy and smart, How It Was is a gorgeous read.

Marion is a bored housewife. She has a caring, loving husband Michael. A 14 year old daughter, Sarah. And, a seven year old son, Eddie. She seems to have the perfect life but what she decides to do has a knock on detrimental effect on her family.
..
..
I'll be honest I nearly gave up on this book. The narrative was quite hard to follow. It kept jumping from different point of view and timeline, sometimes without any clear indication of who we were hearing from or when. However, this was a proof copy from Netgalley, maybe the confusion will be ironed out.
..
..
Marion was a very unlikeable character, and it took me a fair while to figure her out. But, when it became clear of some of the reasoning behind her actions it gave the character meaning.
..
..
The relationships portrayed in this story were well thought out and moulded the storyline. We had Marion's relationship with her kids and husband, also hints of her childhood. There was the sibling relationship of Marion's children, which was lovely to read as we saw the love and hate within.
..
..
A little annoyance with me was Sarah's diary entries. I would like to have seen it written more in the language of a teen, some of the descriptive writing within the diary entries did not scream teenager.
..
..
Despite my early thoughts of quitting. I am glad I carried on, because this did turn out to be a good story of unraveling lies and home truths.

Thanks to Two Roads and Netgalley for an ARC of this book.

This is the first book I have read by Ellis – although I have heard wonderful things about her first book – and whilst the style was somewhat unexpected I enjoyed it. The book is far more about the mother daughter dynamic than I imagined and I found it to be quite an honest reflection of the difficulties that can be faced during a daughter’s teenage years and the butting of heads that can occur.

The narrative style does get a little confusing at times but I wonder if this is perhaps because it is a proof copy and the formatting does not always lend itself to clarity.

I would recommend this if you are looking for an easy, yet well written, read.

3.5/5

There is nothing particularly original about this story but it is well written. A bored housewife and mother seeks satisfaction with other men while her long suffering husband pretends not to know. The effect on her daughter,who knows what her mother is up to,obviously affects her parental relationships too. The story is told sometimes by the author,sometimes by the mother and sometimes from the daughters diaries. That can become confusing. The family,including a much younger brother,is dysfunctional but there is nothing original about that idea either.

In the 1970s, Marion is a frustrated wife and mother, discontented with her life, jealous of her teenage daughter and embarrassed at times by Michael, her accountant husband. Only her son, Eddie provides any joy. She is ripe for an affair and slips off for the night with Adrian (a scoundrel if ever there was one). But what happens when she is away has a devastating effect on her family. Forty years later she sits by Michael's side waiting for him to die and reminiscing about their marriage.

It is hard to like Marion. Her selfishness, her attitude towards her daughter and husband, her feeling superior to everyone around her all point to a dysfunctional character. And yet what happens to her shouldn't happen to anyone and she does appear to learn from it although I would have liked more on this as the book seemed to end a little abruptly. Marion is a fully developed character however as are the other main characters in the novel. And the writing is very good with vivid and lasting descriptions (the description of a teenage boy's spots as the colour of rhubarb and custard sweets will stay with me forever). I wasn't so sure about the structure of the novel however. There were four points of view with the segues between the characters (and timelines) being rather abrupt at times which made it quite confusing. I almost gave up reading it early on but I'm glad I persevered. Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC.

How it Was by Janet Ellis
What a thoroughly unlikable, unpleasant character Marion is. Sarah was definitely the adult in this family once she shook off the potential adoption of her mother’s mean streak. I’m not usually as linear in my assessment but Marion did not awake any sympathy in me. I found her totally disagreeable- how did she even have a friend! Poor Bridget got no support at all when she told Marion she was so miserable. Well done Janet Ellis you certainly evoked strong feelings in me and kept me reading until I finished the book in a day!
So yes, I did really enjoy the book. The characters were well developed and the storyline flowed. How could you not have a fondness for Sheila and her well-intentioned interference. I loved the reality of young children telling others what their parents call them or how they speak of them (Eddie to Tom) and just hope that long-suffering Michael found some happiness in his life once he strengthened his backbone to address Marion’s selfishness and cruelty.

I usually avoid novels written by "celebrities" because they are usually disappointing, but I really liked this one. I thought it had a good plot and was well-written. The main character, Marion, is not at all likeable and is willing to betray her faithful but boring husband wihout a qualm, neglecting her children as she does so. The characters of Sarah and Eddie were realistic and much more engaging than the parents. The story jumps from one point of view to another without warning - perhaps this is just in the proof copy, but it was a little confusing. The tragedy at the heart of the book is well signposted and maybe should have been more of a surprise. The ending did surprise me and I thought more could have been said about the intervening years. However, it was an enjoyable read.

I was dubious about reading this book as it seemed sad however I found the story line intriguing and engaging.

This story is told from four perspectives which makes it interesting. I would recommend.

How it Was by Janet Ellis is a remarkable book. The way the different narratives intertwine is both clever and in many ways essential in telling the story and ‘how it was’ I really disliked the character of the daughter Sarah but I kept being drawn back into thinking what I would feel as teenage girl who not only is attracted to an older man but also finds out her mum is having an affair and I can’t kind of sympathise.
I haven’t read Ellis’s first novel but I will be doing so now!

Excellently crafted, with a protagonist the readership can relate to, understand, and empathise with. An engaging, thought provoking tale.