I am officially back! I completed my final classes for my Master’s degree last week and while I’m admittedly relieved, I’m also feeling a bit off-kilter – not surprising given that I’ve spent nearly every day of the past two years doing some form of schoolwork. I’m not complaining per se, as I did truly enjoy all of my classes and also the exposure to so much great literature that I probably would not have picked up otherwise. What I didn’t like (aside from the stress of having to juggle work + school + family obligations) was the lack of “leisure” reading time during these two years – for a perfectionist like myself, not being able to “get to” the list of books that I plan to read every month is stressful in and of itself, so in that sense, I’m glad to finally have my reading life back (though I definitely have A LOT of catching up to do in the next few months due to how badly I fell behind in my reading goals, especially this year).
As I slowly but surely get back up to speed, I decided to start with a book that has been on my list since the beginning of the year: Patti Callahan Henry’s newest release The Story She Left Behind. I had read Henry’s previous novel The Secret Book of Flora Lea two years ago for book club and really enjoyed it, so this newest work was highly anticipated and in the end, it did not disappoint. Though this is a very different book from her previous one (and not related in any way to that book), the premise is similar in that at the center of the story are a mysterious disappearance, charming characters, an enchanting countryside setting, multiple book-related plot points, and emotionally resonant storytelling that had me captivated to the point that I honestly could not put this book down. This time around, the “disappearance” involves the main protagonist Clara Harrington’s mother, a child prodigy author who leaves her husband and young daughter behind in Bluffton, South Carolina one morning in 1927 and never returns, shattering their lives forever. Twenty-five years later, Clara is an artist and illustrator and has an eight-year-old daughter of her own named Wynnie, whom she named after the mother she still yearns for after so many years. So it is that when Clara receives a phone call from Charlie Jameson, a man in London who claims to have discovered a dictionary containing her mother’s secret language, she decides to go retrieve it. Later, due to the disastrous weather, Clara and Wynnie escape to the Jameson family’s picturesque countryside retreat in the Lake District, where Clara not only finds love and friendship, but also the courage to finally unravel the mystery behind her mother’s disappearance and the story that she left behind.
Henry writes the story in a lyrical prose that is both descriptive and atmospheric, giving the story a delightfully immersive quality that definitely made me feel transported to the picturesque countryside location that Clara and Wynnie find themselves in. One of the things I love about Henry’s writing is the way she is able to infuse subtle elements of magic and mystery to a story, yet still firmly root it in the real world through its historical aspects. The way she writes her characters – endearing, yet flawed (sometimes frustratingly so) – also adds emotional depth to the story. With that said, I did find some of the plot points a tad bit predictable (i.e.: I figured out the “mystery” part pretty early in the story and already had a feeling how it would end), but this didn’t detract from the story, at least not for me.
Overall, I enjoyed this one immensely and would definitely want to read what Henry writes next, especially if it is in the same vein as this story or the previous one. I also want to say that even though I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley, I also bought a physical copy of it because of the beautiful cover art and that’s the version I ended up reading – for me, this enhanced the reading experience quite a bit, so I would recommend this option if possible.
Received ARC from Atria Books via NetGalley.
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