The Life You Want - Emily Barr

I’d quickly popped in the library while waiting for my bus and saw that there was an Emily Barr book in the new part so I grabbed it. I hadn’t read an Emily Bar book for a while but remembered that I had really enjoyed the ones I had.


** The Plot **


The story is about Tansy a married Mum of two living in London who feels like she is missing something in her life. Her and her husband had met travelling ...
...himself a good job in the city and she was busy looking after the kids and working from home part-time. Her friend Elly from travelling who now lives in India emails her and asks her to come out to help at the Children Centre she runs. Tansy is torn as she doesn’t want to leave her family and they refuse to come with her. As she starts steadily drinking more and nearing an affair with her childs teacher her husband makes the decision for her and ... more

I’d quickly popped in the library while waiting for my bus and saw that there was an Emily Barr book in the new part so I grabbed it. I hadn’t read an Emily Bar book for a while but remembered that I had really enjoyed the ones I had.

** The Plot **

The story is about Tansy a married Mum of two living in London who feels like she is missing something in her life. Her and her husband had met travelling and had always said they would return to India but he had got himself a good job in the city and she was busy looking after the kids and working from home part-time. Her friend Elly from travelling who now lives in India emails her and asks her to come out to help at the Children Centre she runs. Tansy is torn as she doesn’t want to leave her family and they refuse to come with her. As she starts steadily drinking more and nearing an affair with her childs teacher her husband makes the decision for her and buys her a ticket to India. She goes out to India and begins to find herself again but is everything as it seems and can she realise this before its too late?

** My Opinion **

I did really enjoy this story and that is what it is. We start with Tansy in London and try to understand her feeling of being trapped in her life which most people would aspire to have. She lives in a nice flat in London and her husband has a good job and she has two bright children, but she has found it hard to adapt to motherhood. The story alludes to post-natal depression and she also has mother issues as her mum was an alcoholic, getting to know this part of her helps you warm to the character and not think what a selfish woman who has run off and left her children when she has a great life.

Throughout the story it was dropped in at points that Tansy and her husband had met whilst travelling but it was cut short because of an incident which had left it mark on her. Now I thought that perhaps this was a kind of follow up to Backpack one of Emily Barr’s other books as I could vaguely remember the storyline but not the characters names and I found it frustrating that at no point in the story was it elaborated so you had a brief recap of what this event was and I think that had I not read Backpack and assumed (correctly I found out after having a quick look at a review for Backpack) I would have been left a bit more baffled and annoyed than I was.

The writing gets more descriptive and interesting when Tansy travels to India. She spends the first few days on her own making her way round a city and the author describes scenes really well so you can visualise what is happening and the views and sights around her. Tansy’s character also develops here as it is just her and the author is just focusing on how she is coping and so you feel her guilt for leaving her children but also her joy at having complete freedom.

There are other characters written in throughout the story, from her family at the start to people she meets on her travels but as it is told from her eyes you don’t really get to know them very well. They do all add to the story and make for interesting developments and interactions showing other sides to Tansy’s personality.

Part of the story in India is that Tansy is working in a children’s centre where children are taken when they are orphaned or parted from their family. The issue about many children having being orphaned in India due to the tsunami and the poor conditions in which they live is brought up briefly and also the issue of whether they should be kept with Indian families or adopted abroad rears its head. Although this is a main part of the story, and taken from different points view due to a blog interspersed throughout the book by a lady from USA who wishes to adopt from abroad, I felt it could have been further developed.

The story is well paced throughout and I looked forward to picking it up to read but I wouldn’t say it was unputdownable. I could see almost all of what was going to happen and where the story was leading to but this didn’t really ruin the enjoyment as I wanted to see how Tansy would react to the discovery and find out what would happen to her. Everything is tied up nicely at the end, except for any explanation of her travelling past.

I would recommend this if you like a good, well told story and have enjoyed Emily Barr’s other books, it might well help though if you have read Backpack recently so you understand that back plot.

Published by Headline.
Paperback 320 pages.

 

...less