The Flight of Cornelia Blackwood by Susan Elliott Wright - Review

I got this book on Netgalley so thank you to Simon & Schuster for granting me access to it. I received an electronic copy of this book for my consideration but was not otherwise compensated for this review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Furthermore, in the interests of full disclosure, I know Susan Elliott Wright a bit. She did the same MA I did and we're friends on Facebook. I follow her writing pretty closely as I've enjoyed all her books and am always excited for a new one.

So I got granted this book and then kept meaning to get round to it and then I finally did! I'm glad I did because I really liked the book; I'm giving it four out of five.

It's set in Sheffield and has Leah - Cornelia - as the main character. At the beginning of the book she's dealing with long term back pain and about to go back to work. It's obvious she's been in hospital but it's not obvious what has happened.

Then her husband Adrian dies and Leah discovers things about his life that she didn't know, and then tries to infiltrate his other life. We see her start to get ill again and, through a dual narrative showing us what happened "then", we see what happened when she was ill.

The dual narrative is really effective, and I liked Leah and felt really sorry for her throughout the book. I loved the setting and I liked the other characters. I liked how it started off showing you how Adrian and Leah got together as I thought it showed the depth of their relationship and then the betrayals later.

I would give trigger warnings for death, for suicide, and for mental illness. I found it quite harrowing to read even though I really liked it too.

Can't wait for the next one!

What She Lost by Susan Elliott Wright

Disclaimer: Susan did the same Writing MA that I did, so I first heard of her at the launch for her first novel as it was an event I could go to on my MA. I bought her book and friended her on Facebook, and I've bought the next two of her novels too. I really like them - well-crafted plots about feisty women which usually have parts set in the recent past as well as the present. If you like Maggie O'Farrell or Sebastian Barry, I'd say that Susan is an author to check out, for definite.

I think that this is the best of her books so far, but Susan says that it was the most difficult to write, and it's not hard to see why. There's a lot of emotional issues going on, and some devastating events. It really took it out of me just reading it!

In the present, Eleanor is in her 50s and lives on a commune in North Yorkshire. She lost her hair to stress-related alopecia when she was a teenager, and it's just started to grow back. Her mother, Marjorie, still lives in the family home in east London. Her friend Peggy lives upstairs and has been caring for Marjorie ever since she started developing Alzheimers. Eleanor and her mother have always had a strained relationship, ever since Marjorie was in hospital when Eleanor was a small child.

Marjorie is getting more and more forgetful, but she keeps looking for something for Eleanor. Can Eleanor uncover the truth about what happened when she was a child before it's too late?

There were several things I really liked about this book. Eleanor is a particular favourite, and I also liked how her hair loss was dealt with, and the effect it had on her sexual life. I thought this was dealt with really well, very sensitively. Likewise, I felt like Marjorie's Alzheimers was sensitively portrayed. Susan actually wrote a book about Alzheimers (a non fiction book) so it's something she knows a lot about, and that shows. I liked Peggy and the relationship she and Eleanor had, and how this made Marjorie feel. I felt sad that Marjorie and Eleanor couldn't get on, and wanted to bang their heads together more than once.

All in all, I am giving this a well deserved eight out of ten.