A Mother’s Sorrow
Opening in Autumn 1892, A Mother’s Sorrow follows the stories of two sisters, Flora and Mary Ellen, through bad times and good until after the end of WW1. We meet their family and friends, and much of the novel revolves around the relationship between Flora and her best friend Evelyn and their families.
Their father, Patrick Halliday, a philandering, violent and drunken lout, throws his daughter Mary Ellen out of the house when she falls pregnant, Flora leaves with her sister, and they walk from Sheffield to Derbyshire looking for work and somewhere to live. Tragedy and happiness are combined when Mary Ellen miscarries but is aided by the farmers in whose barn they had taken shelter, and she finds a new, loving family.
Flora returns to Sheffield and helps her mother escape the clutches of the odious Patrick, and build a new life for herself. Flora marries and, living close to her best friend Evelyn, their stories and families intertwine through the horrors of WWI.
This is an extremely easy novel to read, but it sadly gives the impression of having been equally easy to write. Everything is told and not shown. Dickinson clearly has a myriad of followers, but this is a fairy tale rather than anything true to life. Everything falls into place too easily, every barn on their three-day walking journey appears at the right time, and amazingly, each barn is out of sight of the farm and has a hay loft. Everyone they meet treats them with unbelievable kindness and gives them gifts or help.
Back in Sheffield, again everything falls into place too incredulously easily. Sheffield and Derbyshire are rich in dialect and accent; this novel effectively ignores them both. A fan base pleaser perhaps, but it is filled with tropes and lacks storytelling merit.
