A review by claire_fuller_writer
A Woman on the Edge of Time: A Son’s Search for His Mother by Jeremy Gavron

4.0

Not quite a memoir, nor a biography, nor autobiography, or perhaps all of these, and a detective story. I'm finding it difficult to work out why I found it compulsive reading, but I did. Jeremy Gavron doesn't really remember his mother, Hannah, - she kills herself when he is four - and only many years later does he finally decide to go looking for her. He tracks down everyone (it seems) who knew her and interviews them, and the resulting book is meticulous and moving. As it approached the end I was worried that Gavron wouldn't be able to come to any conclusion about why she committed suicide, or that he wouldn't be able to find the one person who might have some answers. But the ending is handled really well - of course he can't be conclusive, but he makes some logical guesses and he does meet the man. And then right at the end, there's a little unexpected twist.
My only niggle is the snippets of letters Hannah writes to her friend when they were both girls. Even Gavron at one point says they don't add much - they are the letters of one school girl to another. For me, they didn't add anything.