HarperCollins The Other Side of You

Another great book by Salley Vickers , a really enjoyable readPlease take a moment to push the helpful button and make my time typing up and reviewing worthwhile 🥰

I adored the first few chapters and really thought I was in for an excellent read. I was therefore all the more disappointed when the rest of the book turned out to be extremely predictable and although it remained well written throughout, I couldn't help but be sorry it didn't hold all of its earlier promise. I believe the book also lets its readers down when we embark on the love story between Elizabeth and Thomas. I'm just as likely as the next person to swallow an awful lot of far-fetched coincidences and events when the author has managed to cast a spell and when I have been so caught as to forget to retain a critical eye. When it is not so I just can't believe the story and it grows ever so slightly annoying. As I'm going to reveal a good part of the tale don't go on if you haven't read the book.That Elizabeth and Thomas should meet the way they do, thanks to a plumbing accident, is odd enough but it has a charm of its own so why not. That the two should be separated by the onset of septicaemia is rather far-fetched and I thought then the author had gone a bit too far. That Elizabeth should then start a relationship on the rebound was understandable, a lot of people do so and a lot of people then find themselves just as unhappy as she was. That she should then meet Thomas again 15 years later at the airport is once again a bit hard to credit. There are more examples of this and there came a moment when I couldn't take the book seriously anymore. It just seemed to me to become a sort of romance 'à la' Barbara Cartland. A better-written one to be sure and with an 'unhappy' ending instead of a happy one but a book that, at the very beginning, promised greater things and didn't deliver.

I found this book at the National Gallery shop in London. The shop stocks any book - fiction or fact - which has a connection to art. The novel spins a well-told tale combining the world of the psychotherapist (in which Vickers is qualified) and that of the art historian - with special attention, if you like Caravaggio. Fundamentally a romance, it's packed with keen observation and humour. The settings are London/Brighton/Surrey/Rome. It's a very easy read. That's not to say it doesn't stop and make you think about the interplay of characters and the keen insight Vickers has into human relationships. It would be an excellent holiday option. You could be going to the National Gallery in London on a cheap weekend, or something more lavish in Rome - or just stay at home and enjoy.

Read this book with my bookclub. The book drew me in from the start, very thoughtful, deliberate writing with many dimensions. Beautiful storyline, credible characters, a moving picture painted with a lot of depth. I was surprised that a female writer could portray at least two male characters (Thomas and the narrator) with such conviction. Beautiful love story, or stories I should say. Nice touch that the picture on the cover is a pose of one of the paintings described in the book. If you want a book to immerse yourself in and feel that you've met some wonderful, real and interesting people by the time you finish, go for it !

One of the best novels I have ever read, and much more positive than McGrath's "aSYLUM", BUT WITH A SIMILAR UNDERLYING FEELING OF SADNESS AND loss. it tells the story of a psychiatrist/ therapist who finds himself becoming personally involved in his client's story. Interspersed with details about Caravaggio's religious paintings, the story weaves around mental health and the idea of love. i enjoyed it immensely and thought it much better than any of her earlier writing.