The past can still cut like a knife

Author : Louise Beech
Title : Maria In The Moon
Published : 15/08/2017
Pages : 276
Genre : Contemporary Literature
Publisher : ORENDA BOOKS

      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.

    I was unfamiliar with this author's previous works but I knew people had sung the highest praise for her work. So I was intrigued by the prospect of getting to know her.  No knowing which one to start with I figured I would go for the newest one. The blurb sounded promising kind of a psychological mystery.

     Catherine is a curious person to get to know. She is sarcastic and flippant keeping people at arm's length. but she holds so much more inside.  The author gave me a person who seemed all to real complex and damaged her ability to deal with people and especially affection is broken.  Part of this is down to the missing year of her life.  Not being able to remember leaves her with a void, and in not knowing she cant work out how to fill it. This character has so many layers and throughout the book, I was able to peel each one back slowly and carefully to get to the heart of who she was and what happened to her. And as I began to connect with her she took me on her emotional journey.  I just want to make her a cup of tea and tell her I would be with her where ever her memory's would take her.

     For me, this was a difficult book to get my head around to review. It doesn't really fit into a genre, I had seen it advertised as a crime book and a thriller. But for me, it doesn't really fit into either of those.  She took me into someones everyday life. It's just this person has a dark secret lurking in there past only they don't remember it. The author managed to pull me in little by little slowly creeping into my mind. For the most part, this is down to the writer's style it's easy to get on with but at the same time is captivating and vulnerable. She doesn't shy away from showing the raw emotions that her characters go through.

     She does deal with some heavy and dark themes and even this is done with the utmost care. Throughout the story, our Heroine works in a flood crises center and some of the calls she has to deal with I think would break me. It must take a special kind of person to do this kind of work.As the final reveal came up my mind just kept saying no like I could some how have stopped it from happening.  To say this story is heartbreaking i think would be an understatement and here once again the author's style shines through. She giving us reprieves with moments that made me smile or laugh. This makes the story beautifully balance in the emotions it took me through. And allowed the story to feel complete.

     This author manages to create her own place for her characters to live in. If you were looking for the next fill in the blank with the popular author of the month book this might not work for you. But for me, It was a fascinating place to spend some time. she creates people I cared for and became invested in. This is also a book about how just sometimes our minds do things to protect us even if we don't understand why they do it.