That girl from nowhere by Dorothy Koomson- Arrow books

May 2015. England. Hove is a seaside resort in the county of East Sussex, and a constituent part of the city of Brighton. Clemency Smitsson, the main character, has just found a new place to live there and is ready for a fresh start.  Page 5, this is how the narrator describes her new environment : “Everything bad is three hundred miles away and in that place called “the past” while everything is good here, and about to happen in that shiny destination called “the future”.

After a twelve-year, cohabitation relationship, Clemency pretends to her mum that it is all over. To be honest, she did not want any of this to have happened. She wanted to be living at home in Leeds with her plans for the future and her eye on that shop in the Victoria Quarter. Instead of living the life she was promised, her mother is actually moving in with her because she can’t cope with the death of her husband. Too many memories, especially from the last few months.

Clemency is hoping for a better future and one day she goes to a local coffee shop and starts a conversation with the waiter. He would ask her page 39 :

“Sorry, where are you coming from with that cute accent of yours ?” he corrects.

“Nowhere”, I reply. In my head, in my heart, that is where I am from : nowhere. “I’m from nowhere.”

“Everyone is from somewhere” he says.

“Not me”, I reply silently.

We understand the meaning of the title because Clemency was actually adopted as a baby and the only connection she has to her birth mother is a cardboard box hand-decorated with butterflies. Apparently, it was a Finnish tradition dating back to nineteen fort-nine or something. The Finnish government gave new parents a box full of baby things that they’ll need and the box doubles as a crib.

She is now an adult and she is explaining using many flash back memories how she felt during her childhood when she started questioning her mum why she did not look like her.

Then one day in Brighton, she meets someone in a nursing home who knows all about the box and who is about to reveal her a shocking secret.

I’ve already read a book written by Dorothy Koomson. http://apresavoirlu.canalblog.com/archives/2018/12/05/36920099.html I quite enjoyed the first one but I’ve got mixed feelings about “That girl from Nowhere”. Let me explain why.

It’s a 450 pages book and it is divided in 9 parts. At some point, the book sort of change into a crime fiction and I was unpleasantly surprised by the writer’s decisions. This part mystery of the novel was long and slow and I personally think that it did spoil a bit my interest.

However, the story, narrated in the first person, is written through the eyes of an adopted child who would clearly explain how it feels to grow up and live with people who weren’t linked to her but also the story that plays in people’s head : either your adoptive parents are saints or you were stolen from your birth parents.

Another bit I really enjoyed was her memories about Clem’s dad. Although he passed away, I felt he was very much part of the story, like a proper character. Clemency loves using her small instant camera and many paragraphs are actually based on the descriptions of some old pictures, with a title for every single one of them, like “With Dad, September 1985, Chapeltown (Leeds)” or “With Seth and Dylan, November 1996, Liverpool”.

The narrative structure is aroused by the smart use of dilemnas (I enjoyed the options a and b page 151) and regular emails sent by Abi (another female character ) which allows the reader to discover the story from a different perspective.

I found the book quite slow and sometimes a bit boring to be fair but I would recommend it to anyone who have a penchant for making jewellery, drinking coffee and taking photos with a real camera !

https://youtu.be/R0YvMNLy3hc