THE LOVE CHILD by RACHEL HORE

THE LOVE CHILD

BY RACHEL HORE

THE BLURB:-

It is 1917 and nineteen-year-old Alice Copeman is pregnant. Unmarried, she is forced by her parents to give up the child as soon as it is born.

A childless couple, Edith and Philip Burns yearn for a baby of their own. Adoption appears their only choice. As little Irene becomes part of the family, she grows up sensing she is different. But will anyone tell her the truth?

While Alice strives to make her mark in the world of medicine, Irene leaves her Suffolk home in search of answers. As two extraordinary stories intertwine across two decades, will secrets long-buried at last come to light?

THE REALITY:-

I finished this in a very short space of time (in contrast to the Katherine Webb I just read- I had too many problems to attend to to be able to rush through that one), so it must have had something going for it. And yet it didn't touch me deeply. I discovered Hore's work at the same time as I discovered Webb's, and find the latter's offerings more detailed and complex, and in a way more gripping. But A Place of Secrets, by Hore is probably the best offering of these two writers, who by coincidence I have kind of entwined in my mind.

The Love Child did come across as a kind of diary of events, so it made for easy reading, and the characters were very real and easy to imagine. They were true to the beliefs of their time, and I enjoyed the way Alice's striving for the independence of a career was explored. The settings of London and Suffolk offered up enough to be meaty, and yet what I liked most about the book was the way in which relationships were explored, and how people's ideals change as time marches on- most evident in Irene's adoptive mother, Edith, with her initial lack of warming towards the child her husband chose, shifting on to her fear of rejection towards the end of the novel.

I suppose this was, in its own way, a fantastic read; it was just more subtly nuanced than possibly works for me (gimme some drama!) and no great joys or despairs seem to have been documented- although they must have existed within the circumstances of the characters, especially little adopted Irene, although you can sense her childhood confusion. I think it was Fergus who came across the most strongly- you do get a sense of struggle between his beliefs and how he's forced to adapt.

I'd still recommend this, though. A pleasant, rainy afternoon kind of read.