For fans of Sally Page and Ruth Hogan, comes this heartwarming tale about love, loss and connection.
Ernie has had three grand passions in his long life: his dear wife Phyllis, a vintage Norton Dominator motorcycle, and his mini-me son, Stephen. Now, as dementia overwhelms Ernie and takes away everything he can remember about the everyday, memories of those far away times remain crystalline and cherished.
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His granddaughter Nina, seventeen, is equally at odds with the everyday. Excluded from college for her lack of concentration, it seems a job in her mother’s greengrocers is the best life can ever offer. Endless time stretches bleakly ahead, yet Nina feels she can barely make it to the end of each day.
Until, that is, Nina stumbles upon a surprise which, it turns out, can save both Ernie and herself…
My Review
I literally sobbed, reading this moving and emotional story. I have no real experience of dementia, so reading about it from Ernie’s first person point of view was devastating. As he descends gradually into the ‘far away’, and his ‘everyday’ becomes more remote, we live the experience through his eyes.
The ‘far away’ is when Ernie as a child is living in Liverpool with his mum and dad. He has friends and life is normal. Then his father dies and eventually his mum remarries Alf, a larger than life character who rides a motorbike he calls Liberty. Ernie is obsessed with the bike and Alf teaches him everything he needs to know. But when tragedy strikes the family, Alf takes Ernie to Bromley to start a fruit and veg stall, and it’s here that Ernie meets Phyllis, his wife-to-be, and they eventually have two children Stephen and Susan.
In the other timeline, we follow Ernie’s family in the here and now. Ernie is still married to Phyl, but it’s his granddaughter who is the focus of the story. Nina has ADHD and struggles to concentrate at college. Like with Ernie, we see it from Nina’s point of view and as the reader, we learn a lot. When she is asked to leave, she doesn’t know what to do with her life. She is lost. But when Ernie’s dementia means he has to go into a nursing home, she finds a project that will change her life forever.
At first it’s a bit of a slow burn and I didn’t get into it immediately, but as you get to know the characters, you start to fall in love with them (maybe not Susan so much), and the reveal towards the end is something I will never forget. I’m just glad I was at home when I was reading.
Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours
About the Author
Jacqueline Jones lives in Guildford and The Everyday and Far Away is her first novel in this genre. As Jacqueline Sutherland she writes psychological suspense, and she is currently at work on a romance series under the name Pippa Nixon. She lost her father to dementia in 2019.
