Review – The Twilight Hour by Nicci Gerrard

This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.

Reviewed by Kate Appleton

Eleanor Lee has lived a fiercely independent existence for over 90 years, but now it's time to tidy her life away: books, photographs, paintings, letters – a lifetime of possessions all neatly boxed up for the last time. But amongst them there are some things that must be kept hidden from her family. Nearing blindness, Eleanor needs help to ensure they remain in the past. Peter, a young man with a broken heart who feels as lost as Eleanor's past, is employed to help with this task. Together they uncover traces of another life, a story of forbidden love, betrayal, passion, grief and self-sacrifice, which Eleanor must visit one last time. By speaking her memories out loud, and releasing the secrets of her past, Eleanor can finally lay them to rest. To honour them at last, and protect those who must never know.

Eleanor is a vivid character and brilliantly established by Gerrard. She has a depth and realism that makes you want to exchange places with Peter and be her companion on her path back into the past. As a fly on the wall in her vast and echoey house we are treated to her story jumping from past to present as quickly as her memory will allow and recounted through Peter’s discoveries and their subsequent fireside discussions. Ferociously independent, even on the eve of her 95th birthday she refuses to be a burden declaring ‘she would rather be dead’ than move in with any of her children. A woman after my own heart, she has a predilection for a glass of wine (or three) and a wheel of cheese, and is a no nonsense, straight talking woman from another time.

There are a number of relationships to which we are introduced, Eleanor and her husband Gilbert, with her sister Merrie as well as those of a more clandestine nature, but it is the developing relationship with Peter that the reader will fall in love. Dislocated from his life and emerging from a depressive stage Peter is a broken young man, through his distraction, that of organising Eleanor’s affairs he grows and develops a purpose. Together their slightly odd ball friendship saves them both and is a beautiful thread woven throughout the story.

This is a great story of lost love, memory and the ties that bind us together through history and into the future. A perfect companion to the impending wintery nights where you can join Peter and Eleanor by the fire (radiator) and crack open a bottle of red.

8/10

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