It did feel to me as if the author was aiming to up her word count by using this device and when she ran out of steam with one character she could always move on to the next one.

I'm a big fan of Dawn French and have read a few of her previous books, so I expected this book to be as good as the rest, how wrong I was ! It starts slowly and the reader is introduced one by one to Sylvia's visitors ( Tia was a brilliant character to lift the mood of the book)and I wondered where exactly the plot was going, but right in the middle the book took a completely different direction and from then on i couldn't put this book down! Each character comes along to visit Silvia, for various different reasons, and through the things they have to say we learn about them as well as about Silvia.

It's hard to have any action, except in flashbacks, when the whole novel takes place in a hospital room. As the title reveals, the story circles around Silvia, who is lying unconscious in a hospital intensive care unit.

It also seems like a cop-out that every accusation every leveled at Silvia occurs when she's unconscious and unable to respond. It would absolutely not have been hard for an editor or a proof-reader to draw up a timeline to ensure basic consistency across the storylines rather than really gaping and unbelievable plot holes.I’m betting there are some really comical as well as serious thoughts coming from each of these visitors. The book is written from six perspectives; ex-husband Ed, sister Jo, nurse Winnie, housekeeper Tia, friend Cat and daughter Cassie. Just like in "A Tiny Bit Marvellous", family ties take up a lot of space in this book, and is dealt with in a way that is both raw and true. That said, the characters are distinctive and you will love and/or hate them each in turn (I liked Cassie the best). It’s through these different visitors (and effectively their monologues during the visits) that we get a sense of Silvia’s life and relationships (at no point are we presented with Silvia’s viewpoint herself).

In her career spanning three decades, she has been nominated for six BAFTA Awards and also won a Fellowship BAFTA along with her best friend Jennifer Saunders. It's just so hard to read, and you really don't need that much of it to understand that the character has a thick Jamaican accent. The eponymous Silvia is lying in hospital in a coma after having fallen off her balcony, landing three floors below. I was very impressed with the authenticity of each character, as they were all so very different, though you could still sense that some of the characters were connected (Ed and his daughter). That said, I am keen to discuss it with my friends and coworkers, who I know were eager to give it a go.We change our view of her and the people around her as the book progresses, and by the end, we wish all could have been explained, made right. Perhaps it was the omniscient point of view, mixed in with the first person narratives of Silvia's nearest and dearest.

Cassie was living at home when she discovered she was pregnant and then a week after telling her mother, she is evicted from the house. They all seemed unreal to me, including Silvia, who although in a coma, was the largest presence in the book.Penguin (Australia), whose “Australian” book is peppered with –ize endings, you’re better than this too. It's a story about loss, and saying goodbye, but it's also a story about finding the truth and finding love. You take farewell of the characters like they are good friends (it really feels like they are) and even if it's a bit painful, you know it's time to let go.