Letters to my Daughters

Very many thanks, received my copy of this book today. Looking forward to reading it in the garden in this glorious weather.

Tbe Daffodil I finished it ages ago but I didn't teally enjoy it.

that should start tbh ie to be honest.

Thank you for my copy of Letters to my Daughters, a great example of classic chick lit, heart-warming, emotional and well written.

So sad to learn that Emma Hannigan has passed away following many battles with cancer, she was truly talented.

Have just finished reading this book , unfortunately I did not enjoy it very much. It was a very light, easy read, great for holidays or when you don't want to read anything too thought provoking, but not for me.

I agree Daffodil.I suppose it comes down to personal taste.

I have to agree with other readers that, although I finished it, I failed to be gripped by either the characters or the story. I found everything about it to be thoroughly boring.

Thanks for the book Gransnet, I awarded Letters to my Daughters by Emma Hannigan 3 stars and this is my review:

My only previous experience with the novels of Emma Hannigan was in 2014 with the release of The Summer Guest which I found a decent read with a superior plot to most female aimed fluff. I was therefore hopeful of a repeat experience and a warm, insightful and ultimately uplifting in the vein of Maeve Binchy with her final book, Letters to my Daughters. Sadly I found it a disappointing read with the ‘letters’ referred to in the title pretty inconsequential to the actual story and a cast of largely unrealistic characters whom I found difficult to invest in or connect with as their lives are so far removed from reality.

The three Brady girls and devastated by the passing of their childhood nanny who was the linchpin that held the family together and effectively raised them and offered the support, love and understanding that has allowed each to become the independent and successful women they are today. While their mother, Martha, lived for a job that placed her at the heart of the community as a midwife and found meaning through supporting ‘her mothers’, it was Nanny May who nurtured her own children; forty-year-old Beatrice and thirty-eight-year-old twins Jeannie and Rose. Still struggling with the idea of retirement after having relocated from Pebble Bay, Dublin to rural Connemara in the west of Ireland with husband Jim, Martha remains the impatient and selfish woman she has always been with a difficult relationship with all three of her girls. She is jealous of the adoration they and Jim have for Nanny May, a woman who was not family and in her opinion was compensated very well for the work she performed. Thus when she stumbles upon a bunch of farewell letters that Nanny May has written to Jim, Beatrice, Rose and Jeannie, an act of petty spite sees her remove them before they reach their intended recipients. It is only at the reading of the will, nearly two hundred pages later, that the existence of these letters is revealed to the heartbroken Brady bunch and as Jim stays on in Dublin supporting his daughters, Martha uses his absence to throw herself into resuming her career as a busy midwife.

With each very different daughter facing a crossroads in their lives they know they would value the advice of comforter and confidante, Nanny May, more than ever. As all three prepare to make life-changing decisions they are thrown together and come to strengthen their close bond and treasure the support they provide to each other. In the process they also air their differences with their mother and relieve the tension that has forever blighted their family life. Of the three sisters I found Rose the most sympathetically portrayed with Jeannie a more one dimensional creation and Beatrice a bit too beige to really inspire. Although there is some attempt at justifying Martha’s hands-off approach to raising her three girls with her lack of affection towards them having its roots in her own past I found her jealousy difficult to reconcile with a community midwife who thinks nothing of offering maternal advice and understanding to every expectant mothers.

Letters to my Daughters is an easy, undemanding read but a thin plot and a succession of highly unlikely and very fortuitous events hardly make for a meaningful story. The novel is ridiculously overextended and when Nanny May’s letters are finally aired almost four hundred pages later they are simply succinct summaries of each of the problems that the three sisters have faced in the past year, from marital woes to motherhood and career concerns. The novel is clearly written to a formula and obviously intended to illustrate the importance of making changes in order to live the lives that make us happy and caring less about what other people think and more about our own families. A significant factor that limited my enjoyment was the fact that the Brady family were far from ordinary and a privileged bunch with money to burn who could afford the best, never have to scrimp and sail through most of the “dramas” in their lives without encountering much of an hold-up. All in all a solidly predictable female fiction read with the takeaway being that life is far easier when money is plentiful!

Many thanks for the book prize. A decent read but I cannot help thinking that it illustrates how much easier life is when you have money to burn and was a tad shallow.

Valski