A review by fortmeines
Oh Dear Silvia by Dawn French

funny lighthearted sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

The story itself was quite touching, and I thought the
death scene
was very nicely handled. I don't know how to feel about Silvia as a person in the end, but I appreciate where the other characters ended up, except for
the sudden relationship between Winnie and Ed that somehow developed after just a couple of weeks of knowing each other???


I had some issues with the portrayal of Winni, the Jamaican nurse, and Tia, the Indonesian housekeeper. They were good characters, but their dialogue was typed out in accent, which feels a bit off-putting. Just imagining a white author sitting on her writing desk typing out how she thinks those foreign (to her) accents sound like makes me feel extremely wary. Plus, it made their chapters quite hard to read.