People Who Knew Me

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Meanwhile in present day California Connie’s built her life around her daughter Claire who’s approaching her 14th birthday. Claire believes her father died and the pair are close and happy until a cancer diagnosis blows their world apart. Emily is a faulty character...( she runs away and changes her identity leaving her husband to think she died in 911. Did she run because she felt her entire life had been a lie ....and by living a REAL LIE, she felt as if she was living a more TRUTHFUL LIE? The author did a great job setting up the characters. I also liked the shift in POV going from past to present as the protagonist reflected on the choices that brought her to the current quandary. Big fan. I started with Catastrophe, then was delighted to find Motherland. And Bad Sisters was phenomenal and delicious. It was Sharon’s genius idea to option Kim Hooper’s novel and adapt it as audio drama. I think Sharon rightly saw that the story is all about lying and if you’re only listening, it almost becomes like eavesdropping.

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. I am. I love a podcast about the acting industry called Dead Eyes, and Sweet Bobby, the catfishing investigation. I’m also listening to SSAC, the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. I’ve been interested in sporting minutiae and marginal gains since reading James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, about how tiny changes can make a massive difference. But this novel’s obviously about more than that. We’re forced to ponder whether running is always the best option. Is it better to stay and confront our problems? Even if it did mean not continuing her education as originally planned, Emily Morris marries her young love Drew. She has a happy life with Drew. That is, until circumstances change drastically. Drew’s business fails and his mother becomes chronically ill. Emily throws herself into her work as pressures mount on this married couple. Emily can see no way out of the life and difficulties. And then a twist of fate, provides a way out. It’s not too shabby at the moment. There have always been great films with fierce, full-on, female characters who were “too much”. Think about Bette Davis’s roles or John Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence. I played journalist Marie Colvin in A Private War, who was an amazingly complicated figure to put on screen. Now television has also embraced outspoken women who don’t conform to traditional expectations of femininity – and with those characters come interesting opportunities for actresses.My favourite character was the largely mature thirteen year old Claire. I did think the ending was abrupt and wondered if that was a sign of another book to come with these characters. A thought provoking read about choices and consequences as well things in life we sometimes have no control over.

Fourteen years later, Connie Prynne is diagnosed with breast cancer. Now, with her thirteen-year-old daughter Claire by her side, voiced by Isabella Sermon, Connie must confront her past so that her daughter will not be alone if she does not survive. Episode 1 of People Who Knew Me will be available on first BBC Sounds on 23 May, with episode 2 dropping on the 25 May. New episodes will drop twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the entire series will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 from Monday 26 June. And herein lies Connie’s problem. She’s closed herself to everyone and everything. And now needs help.Well written, thought provoking and story telling that balanced the past and present stories with equal import and substance. This is quite a feat to maintain two story lines with equal weight, especially in a debut from such a young author, but Ms. Hooper does it remarkably well.

With head mics attached to these fetching head-bands, so we could be very free and move around. Our voices sound different in various locations – in cars, across restaurant tables, even in the bath. Technically it’s quite a leap forward from the radio dramas one might have heard growing up. You’re very much in the moment with our characters. If somebody cries, we don’t try to hide sniffles. If somebody’s eating, we hear them slurp ice-cream or bite into an apple. It’s a lot more immediate and immersive. Resolved to tell her husband of the affair and to leave him for the father of her child, Emily’s plans are thwarted when the world is suddenly split open on 9/11. It’s amid terrible tragedy that she finds her freedom, as she leaves New York City to start a new life. It’s not easy, but Emily---now Connie Prynne —forges a new happily-ever-after in California. But when a life-threatening diagnosis upends her life, she is forced to rethink her life for the good of her thirteen-year-old daughter.

She must decide how to explain her lies, her secrets, her selfish decisions - and ultimately, her ‘widowed’ husband. Everything she thought she had fled from when she pretended to die in New York. This book had my attention the whole way, but I still found the ending less than satisfying. It was still an interesting story.

Emily's character bothers me. She blames her mother-in-laws failing health for the issues with her husband. She is not brave enough to tell her husband what she wants, what she needs from him.I can't fault her for it. I have no clue how I would feel if I were going through it, and it makes for an amazing story.Emily recreates herself and has the baby in California. Life is going well until she gets cancer. Now, this is when the novel is in full bloom as it makes the reader realize all the stupid things well-intentioned people say to cancer sufferers. This is when the novel illuminates “what NOT to say or do to a cancer person.” Hooper writes the feelings of Emily (now Connie) so beautifully that one cannot feel the strains and pain of living with cancer and being the sole supporter of a teenage girl. Do you see Emily’s decision to flee New York after 9/11 as impulsive? Or does it just become the unexpected final part of an escape she’s been contemplating for some time? Don't think for a minute this is all the novel explores. Holy moly, there is so much more. The choices we make, the consequences that follow. What's the "right" thing to do? It's really hard to believe this is the authors first book! I want more! (4.5 stars)