I loved Kit de Waal's My Name is Leon, so when I saw The Trick to Time was coming out, I grabbed an ARC as quickly as I could. This book is fairly different from the previous one, but by no means less powerful. The focus here is on Mona, a sixty-year-old Irish dollmaker, and her efforts to live to the full the life she has left.

The book alternates between present-day Mona and her past, first as child in Ireland trying to cope with her mother's illness, and later as a young woman attempting to build a new life in England. I loved slowly getting to know Mona: as her past is unveiled and her present unfolds before our eyes, she gradually shapes up to be a wonderfully complex character. Supported by an unforgettable cast of secondary characters, Mona tries to put together pieces of her past life, and tries to overcome pain bigger than anyone should ever have to face.

The author's wonderful writing style takes us back to a time when life was different, and when social tensions exploded, immediately contrasting that with the quiet seaside town where present-day Mona lives. And it just works. Mona is complex and charismatic enough to hold the whole story together, the settings and historical elements add depth to the story, and the final revelations did surprise me a little bit, as I had drawn completely the wrong conclusion! The only negative for me is that, at times, the narration felt a bit slow, making this feel longer than it really is, but it was definitely worth it!

For this and more reviews, visit Book for Thought.

I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way. ( )

We meet Mona (Desdamona) as she is about to reach sixty, and hear her story across time. Love, loss, grief. Immediately you are happy in her company, and interested in the company she keeps. A quiet but powerful novel. ( )

I chose"The Trick To Time" by Kit De Waal as one of the six books I wanted to read from the sixteen books on the 2018 Women's Fiction Prize Longlist and I'm delighted that I did as it is one of the best books I've read so far this year. I recommend the audiobook version of "The Trick To Time" as Fiona Shaw's narration is perfect. Hearing the voices of the two Irish Aunts nicknames Pestilence and Famine, I was transported back to listening to my grandmother and her sister who spoke in exactly the same way.

I went into the book without reading the publisher's summary and I'm glad I did as it reads like the summary of a different book entirely, suggesting either magical realism or a historical romance.

For me, the strength of "The Trick To Time" is that exists purely to tell the story of how the main character, Mona, came to be Mona. The story is told in two parallel timelines: Mona as she reaches her sixtieth birthday, living alone in a seaside town in England, making dolls and providing some mysterious service to some of the women who visit her shop and Mona as a little girl, growing up in Ireland and then moving, in her late teens, to Birmingham to make a new life for herself.

The thing that most engaged me about the book was understanding how the little girl playing on the beach, and the young woman going nervously to her first dance in Birmingham, became the calm, strong but sad woman who makes wooden dolls. The parallel timeline structure of the book kept this at the centre of my attention and kept surprising me, not through the use of tricks or crazy plot twists but by how real and honest the changes in Mona seemed. I'm the same age as Mona and when I look back, I also wonder how the boy I was became the man I am. I was there and I yet I understand Mona's journey better than my own.

I was delighted to see that the sixty-year-old Mona isn't presented either as an old-woman far along the crone road or a woman still pretending to be twenty. Mona knows herself, she knows what's happened to her, she recognises the compromises and limitations in how she lives now and she has still a strong desire to find a way to live her life.

There is a real sense of time passing and perceptions changing while the people themselves remain who they have always truly been as if time simply wears away the bits of themselves that they'd only dressed up in in their youth.

This is a deeply empathic book about the nature of grief, the enduring impact of loss and the effect of time on emotions, memory and our own sense of identity.

I won't put spoilers in this review so I won't talk about the central trauma of Mona's life, except to say that it made me angry and it made me cry and it filled me with deep admiration for the service that Mona provided to others in later life.

Mona is a working-class Irish woman, living as an immigrant in Birmingham at the time of the IRA bombing that unleashed so much pain and hate. Her ambition is simple: to make a family with the man she loves. By today's standards, they have nothing but they have enough to live independently and dream of a life filled with children who are loved and cared for with: "A roof on the house, food on the table and a coat on the hook".. I recognise those kinds of circumstances and that simple ambition but I rarely see it in books that are nominated for literary prizes. I also recognise the situation of being an immigrant and just trying to make your way. I like the matter-of-fact way this was dealt with: no polemics, no dog-whistle posturing, just an honest personal narrative.

The writing is beautiful without being flowery. From the beginning, I understood that there was more going on than I yet knew about and that understanding filled me with pleasant anticipation of a real story worth waiting for. It was a story that caught me by surprise time and again, up to the final chapter, but each surprise made more sense of Mona's life and actions rather than feeling like a magic trick.

Although this is Mona's story, the other people in it are more than cyphers. They are people with histories and emotions and opinions of their own and they rarely take the path that convention or cliché would channel them to.
For example, Mona's father is a complex and compassionate man. When his still-young wife is dying and Mona, his daughter, is playing on the beach to avoid her mother's illness, he finds her and persuades her to spend time with her mother. He says:

"One day, you will want these hours back, my girl. You will wonder how you lost them and you will want to get them back. There's a trick to time. You can make it expand or you can make it contract. Make it shorter or make it longer."

The gentle, sad truth of this sets the tone for the whole novel.

I'll be reading Kit de Waal's back-catalogue and anything else she publishes. I think she's an extraordinary talent.

If you'd like to know more about her and how she wrote "The Trick To Time", take a look at this Interview with Kit de Waal in "The Guardian" covering:

"The novelist on her Irish heritage, the passing of time and why she’s glad she didn’t start young" ( )

Another beautiful story! Very slow and sad, don't get me wrong, but well told and very easy to read. Poor Mona has lived a hard life, from losing her mother as a child in Ireland (Wexford again!) to her tumultuous life with weak William in Birmingham in the 70s. (Don't trust a character called William who actually calls himself William - a rule to live by!) The trials and tragedies in Mona's life, however, only make her stronger - like the best female protagonists - and when she turns sixty, Mona meets the dashing Karl, who has her believing that she is ready for romance. But has Mona left the past behind?

Told partly in flashback, which always throws some readers, I found sixty year old Mona very endearing, but was captivated by her memories of moving to England and getting married after a whirlwind love affair with William. He's a suitably unstable character, even in retrospect, alternating between grand speeches and the wobbling chin of a five year old. I hoped that he wasn't going to let her down, that maybe the 'sudden tragic loss' mentioned in the blurb was connected to the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings. But no. He made me so mad! I want to say more about what young Mona goes through, especially her treatment at the hospital - which was sadly very true to life - but don't want to give away the only real moment of drama in the book.

The one part of the story that I didn't really know what to do with is Mona and her dolls. She and her mysterious carpenter craft wooden dolls, made to match a baby's birth weight or dressed in a precious item of clothing or shawl, and give the 'baby' to the grieving mother, who then talks through her lost child's life in Mona's flat, like some sort of bizarre therapy session. I know the dolls are symbolic, but Mona never really explains how the whole process started.

Overall, I really felt for Mona, let down again and again, and wished for a fresh new start for her. I also loved the descriptions of the seaside, in both locations, and how Kit De Waal fleshes out the characters with very human failings so that they are always sympathetic, if not entirely lovable. An amazing journey. ( )

I gave up on this. I could see the plan but she was not pulling it off. What a dull novel. ( )