Oh Dear Silvia

April 15, 2013
The eponymous Silvia of this darkly comic novel, the second from popular British comedienne French, lies in a coma after a fall from her balcony. Each chapter features a visitor to her bedside, including Ed, her banally silly ex-husband; Jo, her frighteningly silly sister; Cat, her “best best ever friend” (self-described); Winnie, her good-hearted Jamaican nurse; Tia, her not-so-good-hearted East Asian housekeeper; and her estranged adult children, Jamie and Cassie. Their musings, elliptically, relate how Silvia came to be lying in a coma in a hospital somewhere in England, and, more tellingly, reveal something of the visitors’ own lives. With a couple of exceptions (Winnie and Jamie), those lives are maddeningly inane: Ed tries (and predictably fails) to kill himself; Cat can’t believe Silvia doesn’t share her romantic feelings; and Jo is an “unhinged woman with acres of confidence, which is a worrisome combination.” All three make the novel an uneasy, uneven mixture of farce and pathos, but it’s funny and, occasionally, impressively well written. One section, about Jamie’s experience in Afghanistan, is particularly fine, but very much at odds with the otherwise slapstick tone. Agent: Zoe Pagnamenta, Zoe Pagnamenta Agency.