Call My Name - Libroj.org

Lingvo: English

Eldonita je 19-a de oktobro 2022 de Sea Dragon Press.

ISBN:: 978-0-473-62961-8

(1 recenzo)

Two women, bound together by opposite personalities, friendship, love and family—until motherhood rips them apart. From Jenni Ogden, author of bestselling novel A Drop in the Ocean (Gold Nautilus Award for Fiction) comes a compelling family saga set in the Australian Tropics and spanning the 1960s to 1990s.

Her mother dead from a drug overdose, thirteen-year-old Olivia is rescued by Cathie Tulloch, her mother’s friend throughout the years they were held captive in Japanese prison camps in Sumatra in WWII. Welcomed into the Tulloch’s remote family home in the Australian tropics, introverted Olivia is claimed by dramatic, generous, controlling Cassandra Tulloch as her sister and best friend. Moving to the UK at 18, Olivia finds her independence, and partner Ben. But in 1970, after five years away, she is homesick, and ready to fulfill her long-held dream: to make a family of her own. In Brisbane she and Ben …

Two women, bound together by opposite personalities, friendship, love and family—until motherhood rips them apart. From Jenni Ogden, author of bestselling novel A Drop in the Ocean (Gold Nautilus Award for Fiction) comes a compelling family saga set in the Australian Tropics and spanning the 1960s to 1990s.

Her mother dead from a drug overdose, thirteen-year-old Olivia is rescued by Cathie Tulloch, her mother’s friend throughout the years they were held captive in Japanese prison camps in Sumatra in WWII. Welcomed into the Tulloch’s remote family home in the Australian tropics, introverted Olivia is claimed by dramatic, generous, controlling Cassandra Tulloch as her sister and best friend. Moving to the UK at 18, Olivia finds her independence, and partner Ben. But in 1970, after five years away, she is homesick, and ready to fulfill her long-held dream: to make a family of her own. In Brisbane she and Ben share a hippie lifestyle with Cassandra and husband, Sebastian. But while earth-mother Cassandra effortlessly produces beautiful babies, for Olivia, becoming a mother is hard. Even harder is discovering the truth about her own mother. And when the unimaginable happens, destroying the friendship with Cassandra that has been her bedrock for so long, Olivia tells herself that she doesn’t deserve a family, nor a place to call home.

1 eldono

Stephanie Jane recenzis Call My Name de Jenni Ogden

A tear-jerking saga

5 steloj

Call My Name is a tear-jerking saga that takes readers into the lives of two families across the second half of the twentieth century. At the novel's heart are two similarly-aged women, Olivia and Cassandra, who became foster-sisters after Olivia's mother died. The deep relationship between the two is wonderfully portrayed, completely believable while being sometimes heartwarming and at other times exasperating! Cassandra has a great deal of self belief and confidence whereas Olivia frequently doubts herself and has quite a chip on her shoulder when it comes to comparing herself to Cassandra. This inferiority complex drives several questionable decisions on Olivia's part and I did sometimes become quite irritated with her inability to comprehend a bigger picture that didn't revolve just around herself. Creating such genuine characters is a credit to Jenni Ogden's writing. I quickly became fully invested in their lives and the trials which awaited them.

Olivia …

Call My Name is a tear-jerking saga that takes readers into the lives of two families across the second half of the twentieth century. At the novel's heart are two similarly-aged women, Olivia and Cassandra, who became foster-sisters after Olivia's mother died. The deep relationship between the two is wonderfully portrayed, completely believable while being sometimes heartwarming and at other times exasperating! Cassandra has a great deal of self belief and confidence whereas Olivia frequently doubts herself and has quite a chip on her shoulder when it comes to comparing herself to Cassandra. This inferiority complex drives several questionable decisions on Olivia's part and I did sometimes become quite irritated with her inability to comprehend a bigger picture that didn't revolve just around herself. Creating such genuine characters is a credit to Jenni Ogden's writing. I quickly became fully invested in their lives and the trials which awaited them.

Olivia did seem to suffer more than her fair share of bad luck when it came to motherhood and children. I don't want to give away too much about what happens, but this is a very emotional novel. The WW2 Singapore scenes are quite graphic and difficult to read, and I was also intrigued by the Vietnam War era and its aftermath in Australia. This is so often portrayed as an American war that I hadn't previously realised the extent of the Australian involvement. I enjoyed the historical aspects of Call My Name which added a convincing depth of detail to the story. I didn't know contact lenses were available so early, for example!

I don't often read such family-focused novels as Call My Name and I did find I wasn't so gripped by the pregnancy and baby scenes as I was by, say, Pete's attempts to deal with his Vietnam experiences or Olivia's mother's traumatic story. I did love the extended Tulloch family though and am quite envious of their Killara home. Ogden explores a number of ideas around what actually makes up a family, how fragile even the toughest bonds can be when disaster strikes, and how not being honest with oneself and one's closest companions can be a recipe for disaster. By the end of Call My Name I felt as though I had really been put through the wringer, but had also become a part of this family.