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The Hand That First Held Mine
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The Hand That First Held Mine (2010) (edit title/settings)

by Maggie O'Farrell (Author) (edit contributors)

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A stunning portrait of motherhood and the artist’s life in all their terror and glory, Maggie O’Farrell’s newest novel is a gorgeous inquiry into the ways we make and unmake our lives, who we know ourselves to be, and how even our most accidental legacies connect us.

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Lexie Sinclair cannot stay. Enclosed within her parents’ genteel country lawn, she yearns for more. She makes her way to the big city, hungry for life and love, where she meets a magazine editor, Innes, a man unlike any she has ever imagined. He introduces her to the thrilling underground... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Lexie Sinclair cannot stay. Enclosed within her parents’ genteel country lawn, she yearns for more. She makes her way to the big city, hungry for life and love, where she meets a magazine editor, Innes, a man unlike any she has ever imagined. He introduces her to the thrilling underground world of bohemian postwar London, and she learns to be a reporter, to know art and artists, to live her life fully and with a deep love at the center of it. When that love is threatened, she nearly loses the self she worked so hard to find. But then, she will create many lives, all of them unconventional. And when she finds herself pregnant by a man wholly unsuitable for marriage or fatherhood, she doesn’t hesitate for a minute to have the baby on her own, to be shaped by her love for her child. Later, in present-day London, a young painter named Elina dizzily navigates the first weeks of motherhood. Her boyfriend, Ted, traumatized by nearly losing her in labor, begins to recover lost memories. He cannot place them. But as they become more disconcerting and return more frequently, we discover that something connects these two stories—these two women—something that becomes all the more heartbreaking and beautiful as they all hurtle toward its revelation.

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “We contemplate younger women as they pass us in the street, with their cigarettes, their makeup, their tight-seamed dresses, their tiny hand-bags, their smooth, washed hair, and we turn away, we put down our heads, we keep up pushing the pram up the hill.”
  • “Innes's interest never fails to be piqued by the proximity of a woman.”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • They were like clothes invested with static, adhering to each other but with an uncomfortable, aggravating friction.
    Highlighted by 16 Kindle customers
  • 'You young people are always so obsessed with truth. The truth is often overrated.'
    Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers
  • We change shape, she continued, we buy low-heeled shoes, we cut off our long hair. We begin to carry in our bags half-eaten rusks, a small tractor, a shred of beloved fabric, a plastic doll. We lose muscle tone, sleep, reason,
    Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers
  • She wanted to say, no. She wanted to say, I have a son, there is a child, this cannot happen. Because you know that no one will ever love them like you do. You know that no one will look after them like you do. You know that it's an impossibility, it's unthinkable that you could be taken away, that you will have to leave them behind.
    Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers
  • She is here, she is in London: any minute now the technicolour part of her life will commence, she is sure, she is certain–it has to.
    Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
  • She has had a creeping fear of late that what she wants most–for her life to begin, to take on some meaning, to turn from blurred monochrome into glorious technicolour–may pass her by. That she might not recognise it if it comes her way, might fail to grasp for it.
    Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
  • She has no idea that she will die young, that she does not have as much time as she thinks. For now she has just discovered the love of her life, and death couldn't be further from her mind.
    Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
  • She'll have many incarnations in her time. She is made up of myriad Lexies and Alexandras, all sheathed inside one another, like Russian dolls.
    Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers
  • And just as she was sure that this was the way her life would be for ever, that this was her, finally and immutably, something changed, just as it always does.
    Highlighted by 8 Kindle customers
  • It is a particular brand of fury, peculiar to youth, that stifling, oppressive sensation of your elders outmanoeuvring you.
    Highlighted by 8 Kindle customers
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First Sentence edit see section history

Listen. The trees in this story are stirring, trembling, readjusting themselves. A breeze is coming in gusts off the sea, and it is almost as if the trees know, in their restlessness, in their head-tossing impatience, that something is about to happen.

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

  • Motherhood: The main characters, Lexie and Elina, both experience the joys and pains of motherhood as a primary theme throughout the story.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in Woman and Home's Top 30 Books of 2010. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Maggie O'Farrell (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Headline Review
Country: UK
Publication Date: April 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7553-0845-3
Page Count: 341

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PR6065.F36H36 2010
  • Dewey: 823.914

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More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • Lovers and Newcomers
  • The Lake Shore Limited
  • Sarah's Key
  • Mask of Motherhood

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