The darker side of Dawn

I like Dawn French when she is playing a sinister nurse much more than when she’s a jolly vicar. As her new novel, Oh Dear Silvia (Michael Joseph, £18.99) is set in a hospital, her darker side is gloriously indulged.

We are at the bedside of the comatose Silvia, who has fallen off a balcony. Or was she pushed?

Siblings and offspring trot to the ward; each chapter offers an internal monologue or confession — a gallimaufry of recriminations, alliances and reconciliations. What complex interactions there are with somebody who doesn’t move or say a word! Nevertheless, ‘somewhere deep inside the brain of this paralysed body there is life.’

New Age Jo is my favourite character. Her attempts to smuggle pets into the hospital — because dogs and hamsters emit ‘healing energy’ — is as funny a set-piece as anything Milligan put into Puckoon. The nurses, seeing what they believe is a rat emerging from the patient’s pillow, run out screaming: ‘The only immediate explanation is supernatural devilment.