Catrin is 50 and she goes to stay at a holiday home in a small village along the Gower in south Wales. Follow her as she and her family have some drama thrust into their lives when an old face from the past suddenly appears.
Hidden Chapters is a character driven novel of family drama. The central character is Catrin as she has a lot to cope with. We also have interesting family members too, Lloyd her father, Gareth her husband plus their two daughters Bethan and Lowri. Dog owners will enjoy the inclusion of Safi, a new pet for Catrin’s birthday. And then we have an old face from the past adding emotion and history to the tale.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Hidden Chapters. I found it to be better than other character driven family dramas because it had a unique angle that was developed and explained. This added value to this novel is something we don’t generally hear a lot about in mainstream fiction. Catrin’s youngest daughter Bethan was born Deaf.
Don’t get me wrong, Hidden Chapters is NOT a book about hearing OR disability, it is one of secrets and lies. I enjoyed the pace of this novel and the depths of emotions that were skillfully woven into the plot. I quickly developed an empathy for all the characters and enjoyed how life’s challenges were explored. We have adoption, education, adult dreams about their future, loss of a loved one and how to deal with secrets and lies.
I found Hidden Chapters to be a warm cosy read with a lot of love flowing out of the pages. It was a very pleasant and pleasing read for me. I think it is easy for men to put themselves into Catrin’s shoes.
Mary Grand taught Deaf children in Croydon and Hastings which gave her some great insights that she was able to use in Hidden Chapters. I thought these extras added a lot to this novel. It put the character of Bethan and her hearing into perspective. It was nice that Mary did not make hearing a focus of her novel but included it as part of life. I am a coach driver on the National Express network and we support Deaf passengers. I found these sections of Hidden Chapters to be a great refresher with my job as Deaf passengers can so easily miss out and we do not want to add any more stress to their journey. I would like to quote some sections of Hidden Chapters about hearing that I thought particularly should be highlighted…
...The Man serving might mumble or look away so that Bethan couldn’t lip read him or, if he saw hearing aids, and actually realised she was Deaf, he might over-enunciate in some kind of pantomime, making lip reading impossible. Of course, he might be the kind of person who refused to even try to communicate, who would stare at her blankly, and claim that he could not understand her simply because of her intonation was a bit flat and nasal.
‘It was easy. Do you know I ordered a round of drinks in the pub the other night? Orange juice for me, of course,’ Bethan added, grinning in a way that did nothing to reassure her mother. ‘Anyway, this woman behind the bar kept saying ‘What?’ to me, and looking at Sabrina to ask her what I was saying. Sabrina, of course, refused to play. In the end, the woman gave me a piece of paper and a pen, and told me to write down my order, so I wrote, ‘You’re a stupid cow,’ and handed it back to her.’
‘Dad told me the girl is, what do they call it now? Hearing impaired. Is that right?’
‘Actually, Bethan prefers to say she is Deaf. There are people you see that say the word impairment means something needs to be fixed. She was born Deaf.’
‘Lowri tells me you do music. How does that work? Is is all done by vibration?’
Bethan tutted. ‘It’s far more complicated than that. Hearing is only a small part of enjoying music. It’s multi-sensory, a physical thing. Music is a feeling, an emotion. A deaf person feels music within the vibrations in the same part of the brain that hearing people use when the melodies you love get caught in your head.’
‘She’s done well, hasn’t she? We’re so proud of her. It’s been a lot of hard work. People don’t realise how much effort she puts in. Take lip-reading. Actually, only about thirty per cent of English is visible on the lips, and she needs lots of other cues to really follow what you are saying. It’s why they call it speech reading now, Bethan is watching teeth, cheeks, eyes, facial expressions, and body language to piece together what you’re saying.’
‘To start signing with Bethan was a big decision. You see, there were plenty of professionals who said that if I signed with Bethan she would never learn to talk.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. The idea is, you see, that she has this tiny bit of hearing, her residual hearing, and she must work hard at using that. They said that if she signed she wouldn’t, and so would never learn to talk. The way I saw it, Bethan was getting very frustrated. It didn’t seem fair, so I found someone prepared to teach us, and that is the way we went. The expression they used then was ‘total communication’, when you use speech and signing in parallel. I think it’s called something different now.’
When he had gone, she looked at Bethan. ‘How ignorant can you get?’
‘I’ve had worse. One waiter asked me if I needed a menu in Braille.’
‘Good grief.’
‘You get used to it.’
Bethan was signing with Lowri. Catrin watched in awe, struck with the beauty of the signing, understanding again why signing had been described as dancing with words. As Catrin watched, she experienced a deep sense of calm. There were no more ghosts, no more hidden chapters.
...So I found Hidden Chapters to be a lovely warm cosy read that ticked all the boxes for me. Yes, I shed the odd tear along the way but that is due to strong story-telliing by a quality author. Well done Mary, your second novel gets the top score of 5 stars from me.
Hidden Chapters was written in 2016 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.
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