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The Cradle, by Patrick SomervilleIt seems every book I’ve read for the last few years has been 400 pages or more long. Some have even crossed the 700 pages mark. So it almost felt strange to pick up The Cradle, which It’s a tale of family. About how it oddly defines our lives and connects us across spans of time. About how these connections sometimes are revealed to us in strange ways and more or less surprising ways. A whimsical, strange request from a mother-to-be - Marissa Bishop – who is expecting her first child, and who is therefore in a unique position to voice far fetched wishes, is what starts this tale. Marissa must have the old cradle she was once rocked in and which disappeared with her mother six years before. Her husband Matthew can not see how he can deny this request. So he reluctantly agrees to find Marissa’s mother and the cradle, having no idea whatsoever about what he has actually agreed to. So Matthew sets out on his quest – if not for the Holy Grail, then for something that increasing looks equally hard to locate. As well, the quest soon turns into a journey into the secrets of his wife’s family and into his own, previously hidden, childhood memories. As the story progesses it also becomes clear that his strange quest is somehow connected to that destiny of the older couple Renee and Bill who are seeing their nineteen year old son off to war in Iraq. Short The Cradle may well be, but nevertheless full of content, with strong, complex and partially damaged characters and an exploration deep into the cores of being. It is a compelling novel that raises fundamental questions. An excellent debut, written in a spare and buoyant prose with a fast-moving plot is very well worth reading, is my considered opinion of The Cradle.
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is (in my version) exactly 200 pages. Comparatively speaking, a very short book. Especially for a debut novel (Somerville has previously published a collection of short stories entiteled Trouble). But writing short doesn’t mean that it is easy to write, and The Cradle is a complex, swiftly paced and presicely told little gem that must have been very hard to write.
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