Mona — single, childless, pushing 60 — sells wooden dolls made by a carpenter friend, which she delicately costumes from odds and ends of fabric sourced in charity shops. But her business has an odd spin-off: mothers who’ve suffered past stillbirths can come and ‘order’ a lump of carved wood made to the specified birthweight of their dead child. By cradling this weight and imagining the future the baby never had, they work towards a kind of closure. Meanwhile, Mona herself — who grew up in Ireland but lived in Birmingham through the IRA bombings — has a tragedy of her own on which she has little or no closure.
Far too few novels feature protagonists who are post-menopausal — and, much to her creator’s credit, Mona hopes and yearns and plans like any thirtysomething. So, despite the fact that alarm bells tend to ring whenever I read about grown women and dolls (only one sad step from soft toys on the bed), I still began Kit de Waal’s second novel and follow-up to her deservedly bestselling My Name is Leon, with hope in my heart.
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