Firstly I wish to thank Anne Cater and Orenda Books for inviting me to be part of this Blog Tour for MARIA IN THE MOON by Louise Beech

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Long ago my beloved Nanny Eve chose my name. Then one day she stopped calling me it. I try now to remember why, but I just can’t.’

Thirty-one-year-old Catherine Hope has a great memory. But she can’t remember everything. She can’t remember her ninth year. She can’t remember when her insomnia started. And she can’t remember why everyone stopped calling her Catherine-Maria. With a promiscuous past, and licking her wounds after a painful breakup, Catherine wonders why she resists anything approaching real love. But when she loses her home to the deluge of 2007 and volunteers at Flood Crisis, a devastating memory emerges … and changes everything. Dark, poignant and deeply moving, Maria in the Moon is an examination of the nature of memory and truth, and the defences we build to protect ourselves, when we can no longer hide…

HERE ARE MY THOUGHTS AND REVIEW

Now I have to admit that Louise Beech is one of those authors that I kept promising myself I would get round to reading but up until now I hadn’t and so this was the one that I went with. The cover and the title wasn’t any sort of give away to the story, unless you read it and what is an intriguing cover than becomes the most beautiful art work ever. Enough to make me well up every time I see it now.

At 31 years old Catherine, still single and trying to cope with the aftermath of the horrendous  floods in Hull 2007, is hoping that finally work can start on the rebuild of her beloved home. She has always been someone who wants to help in some way, even her job is one is one in a care home on the night shift but it isn’t enough. After already working on help lines in the past she is perfect for the help lines that have been set up in the area after the disaster. Some people just need to talk while for others it is past a time of talking they just need someone there at the end of the phone for their final moments. The call centre can not intervene or give advice, the people are there simply to listen.

This seemed such an ordinary story to be honest but it was far from it. When I was a child I had an accident that almost cut off my finger and I didn’t feel it. It was like my brain said whoa this is too much pain to deal with so it isn’t happening. Well this was Catherine, sometimes when things becomes impossible to accept the mind protects us, if it didn’t we just wouldn’t cope. The difference was my scars showed but hers were still deeply hidden. Catherine’s mind had taken a gap year when she was 9 and although family could tell her what that part of her childhood was like she really had no memory of it.

When the aftermath of the floods of Hull were becoming under control  the flood gates of Catherine’s mind began to open and this woman I couldn’t connect with at the beginning of the story became one of the strongest characters that I have read about. The cover and title on this book felt like they couldn’t have ever been anything else.

This is still an ordinary story about an extraordinary woman told by an exceptional author in the most beautiful and meaningful way.

HERE IS A LITTLE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Louise Beech has always been haunted by the sea. She regularly writes travel pieces for the Hull Daily Mail, where she was a columnist for ten years. Her short fiction has won the Glass Woman Prize, the Eric Hoffer Award for Prose, and the Aesthetica Creative Works competition, as well as shortlisting for the Bridport Prize twice and being published in a variety of UK magazines. Louise lives with her husband and children on the outskirts of Hull – the UK’s 2017 City of Culture – and loves her job as a Front of House Usher at Hull Truck Theatre, where her first play was performed in 2012. She was also part of the Mums’ Army on Lizzie and Carl’s BBC Radio Humberside Breakfast Show for three years.

AUTHOR LINKS

Website

https://louisebeech.co.uk/

Twitter

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