Novel set in Yorkshire (…very thought provoking…)

13th September 2018

And then it happened by Linda Green, novel set in Yorkshire.

Mel met Adam when they were childhood sweethearts and, twenty years later, when we encounter the couple, they remain blissfully happy. Life seems pretty idyllic for them; they have an adorable daughter, Maya, successful careers that both enjoy and a lovely house in a Yorkshire village.

The only fly in the ointment is that Mel tends to worry that their good fortune might be about to be snatched away from them.  She has a guilty secret that she has kept from Adam and feels that, at some point, she is bound to be punished for this. And she’s not wrong.  Adam has a serious accident at work that results in him spending most of the rest of the novel first in a coma, then in a persistent vegetative state.

Linda Green is an award-winning journalist and the best-selling author of a lot of books.  There’s no doubt that she can write.  The beginning of the novel held my attention – the relationship between Mel and Adam is believable and heart-warming and nowhere near as cloying as might have been predicted from the blurb and four-year-old Maya is a delightful bit of characterisation. Once the “it” of the title happened, however, unfortunately it all went downhill.  For a start, I wish the author had given Adam a different kind of accident – being nutted by a dinosaur skeleton at the museum where he works is just too farcical to take completely seriously, despite the grave consequences.  And then, the rest of the novel is given over to a detailed account of Adam’s progress or lack of it and the profound effect the accident has on the people around him and it’s fairly heavy going.  The sub-plot featuring Adam’s best mate, Steve is, I think, intended to provide the reader with a dramatic revelation, but it was pretty obvious where that was headed from the start.  It’s difficult not to feel that, if the story had been handled differently, it could have had a lot more impact.

And then it happened is set in Yorkshire and there are some descriptions of the countryside when Adam is out running at the start of the novel that bring the area to life for the reader but these are, sadly, short-lived and the rest of the novel is set mostly in various hospital wards.

It is apparent that Linda Green has done extensive research for this novel and it’s certainly educational.  I learned a lot about brain injury, coma, vegetative states and minimally conscious states and it is, without doubt, very thought provoking. Whether it hangs together as a successful novel is another matter.

Ellen for the TripFiction Team

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