One Moment, One Morning

October 17, 2011
A man’s sudden death touches off seismic shifts in the lives of three women, wife-turned-widow Karen, neighbor Anna, and teacher—and closeted lesbian—Lou, in this affecting weeper about friendship and family. Rayner (Getting Even) takes a random tragedy on a morning commuter train from Brighton to London and parses it over the hours of six days plucked from half a year, dissecting the women’s emotional unraveling and eventual rebirth as stronger mothers, lovers, friends. The aching loss heaped swiftly upon Karen and her two young children, Molly and Luke, is reason enough to cry, but their search for solace turns from maudlin and mundane to insightful and fresh thanks in part to the pleasing retrospective flashbacks of this family’s life. “It’s his failings that made him who he was,” Karen confesses in her plaintive eulogy. And while Karen rebuilds her fractured family, best friend Anna contemplates the end of an abusive relationship with a charming drunk, and Lou finally trusts her heart enough to come out to a family she vastly underestimates. Rayner sets up a tricky emotional minefield for these vulnerable women, but deftly guides them to a place of power and truth.

December 15, 2011
The lives of three women are altered when a man dies on a commuter train. Lou is paying little attention to the people around her; after all, she makes the trip from Brighton to London every morning. But then suddenly the man across from her is having a heart attack. His wife Karen is begging for help, but it's too late. Everyone is asked to exit the train, and Lou shares a cab the rest of the way to London with fellow traveler Anna. The two strangers commiserate over the tragic event when Anna's cell rings--it's her best friend Karen, in shock at the sudden death of her husband Simon on that very same train. Anna returns to Brighton to comfort Karen as Lou goes to work as a youth counselor. The novel spans the ensuing week, as Karen prepares for Simon's funeral and Anna and Lou, in their own ways, reevaluate their lives with this ever-so-sharp reminder of their mortality. Anna is a successful copywriter, but her home life is a mess--boyfriend Steve is a mean drunk, but she can't imagine life without him. Lou lives a happy lesbian life in gay-friendly Brighton, but she hasn't come out to her overbearing mum, and the secret is killing her. Meanwhile, Karen and her two young children are barely coping now that their family is broken. Anna supports Karen, and Lou with her counseling experience is there for them both. The novel's strength--facing head-on the minutia of coping with a death--is also one of its failings when it occasionally reads like a self-help book. Sitting with the body in hospital, explaining to children about saying goodbye, how to reach out to friends and banish guilt--a week's worth of it gets a bit too much. Nevertheless, Rayner never shies away from her character's misery and ineptitude in dealing with the worst, offering a welcome dose of reality in the literature of female bonding. Affectionately drawn characters lift a morose topic into a companionable light.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2011

One Monday morning a man dies suddenly on a commuter train from Brighton to London, and the lives of three passengers are changed forever. Traveling with the man are his wife, Karen; Lou, a stranger who observes his death; and Karen's best friend, Anna, in another car. Anna and Lou are thrown together by chance as they share a taxi to try to make it to their jobs on time. The three women find their lives intertwining as they give one another the strength to make their way through grief and find the courage to deal honestly with personal issues they had been avoiding. VERDICT Rayner's (The Other Half; Getting Even) well-written third novel, which sold over 200,000 copies in Britain, will draw in readers with its dramatic opening and keep them engaged in its fully fleshed-out characters as the story progresses. Fans of women's fiction dealing with friendship and overcoming loss will appreciate discovering a new author.--Karen Core, Detroit P.L.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2011
Simon, 51 years young, dies suddenly one morning on the train to work. He leaves behind a wife, Karen, and two young children, but they are not the only people touched by his loss. Karen's best friend, Anna, and Lou, a stranger who was also on the train that morning, find that their lives are also forever changed. Karen, Anna, and Lou each has something different to learn from the loss, but they all ultimately find themselves bound together in a friendship forged during the most trying of times. While the subject matter tends toward the trite, Rayner's writing is concise and contemporary, bringing her characters and their emotions to life in so realistic and believable a way as to avoid the clich'd. Her portrayal of emotion is authentic, even to the point of being painful to read, but this story is as much about relationships, hope, and second chances as it is about death and loss. Its most valuable lesson of all is that each of us has only one life to live.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)