Not for me, this book. Although there's nothing wrong with the writing, I just could not believe in the characters. They all seemed unreal to me, including Silvia, who although in a coma, was the largest presence in the book. Her past holds a dark and terrible secret, and now that she is unconscious in a hospital bed, her constant stream of visitors are set to uncover the mystery of her broken life. And she must lie there, victim of the beloveds, the borings, the babblings and the plain bonkers. I really wanted to like this book and in fact I had mentioned it enough times that my boyfriend bought this for my 21st birthday (3 years ago, oh my goodness). I really just couldn't get into this book and I had some major issues with it. Now she's unconscious in a hospital bed, at the mercy of the mad friends and crazy relatives who have come to visit. Her beleaguered ex-husband, her newly independent daughter, her West Indian nurse, her bohemian sister, her best friend, her enthusiastic housekeeper, and others all share a piece of their collective mind with the complex woman—the bad mother, the cherished sister, the selfish wife, the matchless lover, the egotist, the martyr—they think they know. As she has got older, she says, she has felt less and less the need to perform, to put on a "firework display. And it's a massive relief. Somewhere in my 40s I thought, 'this is exhausting, trying to make it alright for everybody and trying to please everyone all the time.' It doesn't mean you have to turn in and be entirely selfish – it just means you have to stop a little bit of that." Did people find it disconcerting? "I think some people did, yeah. Because I just went a bit quieter. I think you only find out your true nature when you return home, and when you have a bit of peace and quiet.

Oh Dear Silvia is the brand new novel from one of Britain's most loved comic writers and the number one bestselling author of A Tiny Bit Marvellous.She has also, over the past three or so years, spent a lot of time dissecting the nature of marriage. When she was writing her novel (which begins with a visit from Silvia's ex-husband, still trying to work out what the power relationships were in their marriage, how they capsized) she was acting alongside Alfred Molina in BBC2 sitcom Roger and Val Have Just Got In. Set in real time, in the half hour when they get home from work every day, it is "a piece about the intricacies, and the smallness of a marriage," the day-to-day glue, particularly when, as in the case of Roger and Val, they are in the process of surviving the death of a baby, distracting each other, as French puts it, "with play and constant blether". French has described the sitcom as "like stealing money from the comedy department to make a drama"; it was reviewed in this paper as "not … comedy as we know it, but Roger & Val manages to mix beautifully written dialogue with a quiet observational humour that can nevertheless leave the viewer gasping for air"; French's performance was one of the best of her career. Although French didn't write the sitcom (twins Beth and Emma Kilcoyne did that), the idea for it was hers, developed while her real-life, 25-year marriage to Lenny Henry was breaking up. The characters are well-developed which I found to be a relief. Each chapter of the book is told by someone who knows Silvia. The main characters that have their own chapters being Ed, Cat, Jo, Cassie, Winnie, and Tia. Ed is by far the most boring character that could ever be in a book. All he mostly talks about is his boring trees. Whilst I did find him to be a well-developed character, I found him extremely dull and found myself wishing that he'd just stop talking. Winnie and Tia were my favourite characters. Winnie has a big heart, and it really comes across in this book. Tia is from Indonesia so has a hard time pronouncing Silvia's surname which always made me laugh!! I found Tia and Jo to be the characters that brought the humour, and they delivered! Cat is the high strung character, and Cassie is the angry daughter. Each character has a unique personality. Well done to Dawn French for making each character unique! Through each of the characters' stories, we learn more and more about Silvia. Also, this was meant to be funny???? There is literally nothing in it that I even thought was meant to be a joke. Instead what I got was the tale of a complex woman, one misunderstood by almost everyone in her life, told through the visitors to her hospital room, where she lies in a coma. This second novel by Dawn French is easy to read but in the early parts difficult to interweave the various contributions of the narrators into a cohesive piece of work. Persevere, it is worth it. Silvia Shute has fallen three floors from a balcony. She is in intensive care in a coma on life-support including mechanical ventilation. She is the younger sister of the eccentric Jo. They lost their mother at a young age and their army-trained father went off the rails. Sylvia divorced dependable Ed after showing little love for him or their two children, Jamie and Cassie who after leaving home had no love or respect for their mother.

Fantastic, passionate, compassionate, so much wisdom, a lot of humour, very real and credible' BERNARDINE EVARISTOThe first problem I had with the novel is that two of the six main characters have their speech written in dialect – Winnie in a Jamaican lingo - “Right, sidung ‘pon dat chair, sista. Yu better start talking. Gimme some reasons for dis craziness” (p193). No, just no. Tia, the Asian housekeeper, oh so amusingly refers to Silvia as “Mrs Shit”: “Tia has been taught to swear by her two sons who were born and grew up in England, and who amuse themselves by cajoling her into using utterly inappropriate language. She’s not stupid, she knows they are having a laugh at her expense, but she can’t be bothered to deduce exactly why, and frankly, she doesn’t care”. Again, just no. It’s cringeworthy. The main character in Dawn French's new novel says not a word for the entire book. It was, as she tells it – sitting on the other side of a long table in a high, white room, in central London, arms tightly folded across her chest – an entirely practical decision. She had discovered, after writing a memoir in the form of letters, and then a first novel in similar vein, that monologue is where she feels most comfortable. So the protagonist, Silvia, lies in a coma in a hospital bed, inert, while her family and friends sit by her, hoping to rouse her, and talk and talk and talk. The novel is held together by Silvia's Jamaican nurse, Winnie. She treats Silvia with the repect she gives all her patients and is the only one with no axe to grind, no anger, hate or questions but only wishes good things for Silvia. She is a totally professional caring person. Will Silvia, who’s in a coma in the hospital, ever speak again? If not, then her visitors, friends and family will help piece together her story, while also revealing their own. Just like in "A Tiny Bit Marvellous", family ties take up a lot of space in this book, and is dealt with in a way that is both raw and true. And just like with "A Tiny Bit Marvellous" you finish the story with a sense of warmth, and also with the feeling that the book couldn't have ended any other way. You take farewell of the characters like they are good friends (it really feels like they are) and even if it's a bit painful, you know it's time to let go.

There are some subplots, some improbable and others rather repetitive. The circumstances surrounding the ill-tempered, violent, possessive Irish Cat (a GP),are an important part of the novel, yet do have some improbable features. The descriptions of her native Connemara are attractively portrayed. Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives. The title of this book really works. After reading the book, I would say it definitely fits well with the story. Also, if a coked-up doctor who you suspect is abusive enough a person that you need to isolate your whole family from her, including your unborn grandchild, turns up at your house high as a kite with a dead husband in her trunk, you call the police. Silvia’s motivation to begin a relationship with Cat and cut herself off from her whole family feels really unrealistic and I didn’t buy it at all. None of the aspects of Silvia gel and, for this novel to be successful, this needed to happen. How does she think comedy has changed since she started out? For instance, it's hard to escape at the moment a strong thread of cruelty, of which comedians such as Frankie Boyle are the apogee. "Yes, I agree. But maybe it's a bit like buses – maybe quite a lot of cruel comedians just happen to be in the ether at the moment. [Maybe] it'll pass, and then we'll get lots of lovely people pretending to be animals for a while. That would be great," she laughs.Silvia is someone who admittedly isn’t always likable; she isn’t liked by all of her visitors and I enjoyed these sub-plots to the story and felt there were plenty of surprises along the way. There were times when this novel is laugh-out-loud funny (Silvia’s sister literally tries everything to get her sister to come out of the coma including getting a stripper into the hospital room), yet there are times when the novel is also very dark and moving. Before I start critically reviewing this book, I wanted to first express my love for Dawn French. I think she is a fantastic person with a wonderful personality and brilliant comedic timing. I have previously read her autobiography, Dear Fatty as well as her first fictional novel, A Tiny Bit Marvellous, both of which I loved and gave 5 stars without question. This book was pitched as 'if you liked the previous books, you'll love Oh Dear Silvia'. Unfortunately this wasn't the case for me.