Book Review: The Lost Girls of Devon

 

The Lost Girls of Devon by Barbara O'Neal (2020)
****
(Read on Kindle + Audible, July-August 2021)

The story in this book is told from four different angles, by four generations of women in the same family. The narrative perspective shifts from one chapter to the next as they take turns telling the story (partly overlapping each other).

Zoe was born in a small village in Devon, England. When she was still quite young, around seven years old, she was left in the care of her grandmother, Lillian, while her mother Poppy went off on her own to travel the world - and as it turned out, never came back. Or not until long after Zoe herself was grown up and had moved to the US. As much Zoe loved her grandmother, it left deep wounds in her that her mother had abandoned her.

Many years later, Zoe is living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her own teenage daughter, Isabel. One day she gets a phone call from her elderly grandmother Lillian back in England, who is still living alone in a big house in the village in Devon. Lillian tells her that Zoe's best friend from childhood, Diana, has mysteriously gone missing since a couple of weeks. In later years, Diana has also been helping Lillian a lot; and Lillian now asks Zoe to come back to Devon to help find out what has happened.

Somewhat reluctantly, Zoe agrees to come. She brings her daughter Isabel with her. Isabel has recently been a victim of some kind of bullying on social media. She refuses to discuss the details of it with her mother – or anyone – but is clearly suffering from a kind of post traumatic syndrome. She has quit school but is continuing her studies online. They decide she'll be able to continue with that from England (and also keep contact with her psychologist online). A change of physical environment may even be of help to her.

In Devon, Zoe begins to understand that her grandmother Lillian is in the early stages of dementia. Some days she seems as alert as ever, but on her bad days, she gets seriously confused and is not able to manage on her own. Zoe also learns that her own mother Poppy is now back living in the village, and she too has been helping Lillian quite a lot lately.

Poppy runs a small New Agey kind of gift shop, The Kitchen Witch, where she also does tarot card readings. Zoe still does not want any contact with the mother who abandoned her as a child, and does her best to stay away from her. (When Poppy comes to visit Lillian, Zoe goes out, so as not to have to talk to her.)

Isabel on the other hand soon finds her way to the shop on her own, and gradually gets to know the grandmother she's never met before – to their mutual benefit.

Meanwhile, Zoe reconnects with an old boyfriend, Cooper. He too is/was a friend of Diana's (all three of them knew each other since childhood/youth). Efforts to find out what happened to Diana now bring Zoe and Cooper together again, in spite of some initial awkwardness between them because of things that happened in the past.

Descriptions of the Devon landscape are woven into the story throughout. Artistic/creative talents run in the family. Lillian is a well-known mystery writer, Poppy is creative in making things to sell in her shop (like little talismans and potions from various herbs), Zoe has a talent for sketching and painting, and Isabel is a budding photographer, walking around taking lots of photos with her camera.

The mysteries connected with Diana's recent disappearance are also woven together with the relationships, history and personal secrets of all the main characters. Love, betrayal, disappointment, trust/distrust, forgiveness and healing are recurring themes that all of them have to deal with in various ways.

To be honest, when at first I started listening to this book as audio book, I found it hard to follow. In spite of four different actresses reading the different narrative ”voices”, it was hard sometimes to keep apart who was the narrator in each chapter. I also found myself dozing off a bit too often, and losing context (maybe more to do with ”me” than the book as such). I then decided to start over from the beginning, reading it on Kindle - especially the first part of it, until I got it firmly sorted out in my head who was who, and grandmother / mother / daughter of whom... Once that bit was clear, I began to appreciate the book a lot more, including the multi-layered narrative approach; which is obviously intended as an extra reminder about how a lot of things in life may look different depending on who is telling the story, and how much we know of their background. And age and life experience of course counts as well, when it comes to how we react to things that happen to us.

The title of the book also gets yet another dimension at the end, when we finally learn what happened to Diana.