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This was full of synchronicity. So beautiful.

What a wonderful book. I listened in a day, doing the same task as the wonderful group of flawed women, who merged on their friend’s property to undertake the clean up after her death. I was cleaning cupboards for hours as these women were doing the same. Thinking about life and the shedding of things, not just inanimate.

Charlotte Wood tells a story of older women, women I related to so much �� I did not have to be seventy years old as they were. I heard their internal plights, their feelings of distress, contemplation and reflection. The way they saw themselves. The way they saw others see them.
As each woman is tasked with a room each, we begin to realise how much their lives are intertwined, the foibles, the bickering and the possible end of the road of this friendship.

Even before they converge, the trip each one takes, the mode of transport, the observations of the women on the train, or in the car as they internally berate the other women, and reflect on their past. The reader understands the comparisons to others are really comparisons to themselves, and where they have wound up in life and how the bloody hell they got there.

Each woman is constructed deftly, differing personalities bringing separate quirks to the friendship group. The characters all drawn remarkably well, I love to know the feelings of fictional characters. The author has done her job when this is how a reader feels.

This is not a large book, therefore the depth of feeling I captured and the changing of connection and disconnection the characters had was acute. The questions each raise as the state of the friend group seems to be in complete tatters, the lies kept for decades, and the intricate assessment of what is to be at the end of their friend’s life is a layered and intricate finale. There is so much in this book, quietly and brilliantly presented. I realise I need to read more of this author's work.

I listened to this via the BorrowBox app and my public library.