How Do You Know?

The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell

How do you know if a book is going to grab you? With so many different media outlets vying for our attention and the presence of information hitting a point of overload, it is getting increasingly difficult to distance yourself from the chatter long enough to focus on something with enough intense concentration to actually absorb the material in front of you. And when it comes to books, don’t even get me started. My To-Be-Read pile is growing daily and I can’t finish one book fast enough before I am jumping into another. I have to actually control the urge to leave a book halfway through if something more interesting crosses my path. I think I have a problem with monogamous reading! (This might be a problem more common than I think, maybe I should start a support group?)

Anyway, I randomly stumbled across a copy of Maggie O’Farrell’s THE HAND THAT FIRST HELD MINE and even though I am knee deep in Jonathan Franzen’s FREEDOM, I couldn’t help but flip through it. I know next to nothing about this book except for the fact that I have seen the cover on a few of my favorite book blogs, so I know it’s been making the rounds. But you can imagine my delight when I started reading it and less than ten pages in (page 5, to be exact) I found this gem of a quote.

“”She keeps only the sea in her sights. She has had a creeping fear of late that what she wants most – for her life to begin, to take on some meaning, to turn from blurred monochrome into glorious technicolour – may pass her by. That she might not recognise it if it comes her way, might fail to grasp it.”

Gorgeous prose like that just destroys me! …and makes me have to resist the urge to dive head first into this book. It has moved to the tippity top of my to be read list and I can’t wait to explore this fantastic new author.