Legacy

By Nick Compton

Powerful memoir of cricket, family and depression by former England cricketer Nick Compton.Nick Compton had it all. A literal golden boy, to many observers it would seem that he was born to be a great in the sporting arena coming as he did from an incredible sporting ancestry. HIs grandfather Sir Denis Compton played cricket for England and football for Arsenal. Honed at an elite English boarding school, with a telegenic profile perfectly suited to the modern media environment, Nick appeared to be blessed with that rare ability to be able to stride out and face down the world's quickest bowlers, to survive and thrive in the danger zone at the hands of the hurtling new ball.However, greatness in any field comes at a price and this memoir explores the almost 'Faustian pact' he made in order to secure that time in the sun. It will show what 'Mistress Cricket' demanded from Nick as his side of that bargain. The family he left behind, the failed relationships both personal and professional and the utter physical and mental exhaustion which resulted from his drive to stay at the top.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Release date: Jul 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781838958268

Book preview

Prologue

Who ever hoped like a cricketer?

It was one of those days. The sun was shining down on Lord’s on the first morning of the third Test against Sri Lanka in June 2016, the packed house lathered in sunscreen under cloudless, bright blue skies. Commentators shared buttered crumpets as they watched the teams warm up on the cross-hatched emerald green outfield while Alastair Cook was presented with a commemorative silver bat for passing 10,000 Test runs.

It was, as the Scottish cricketer and writer R. C. Robertson-Glasgow observed above, a day full of promise and hope.

The match itself was a dead rubber. England had already bullied a 2-0 lead and the home crowd wanted more of the same. The other interest was in me – ‘Nick Compton, a man with plenty on his shoulders’, as one media story observed because this was my last chance to remain an English Test cricketer, and everybody around the ground knew it.

It should have been perfect. This was the ground where my grandfather, Denis, had become a legend of the game and who once wrote about Lord’s: ‘When you are there you feel yourself at the very heart and centre of cricket and immersed in its essential moods.’

But it wasn’t.

Alastair won the toss and batted. I was due in at number three, but instead of itching to get out there and into battle, I sat watching with increasing dread as he and Alex Hales put on a half-century stand until Alex tried to knock left-arm spinner Rangana Herath out of the park and was caught behind.

This was it then. I tried to gee myself up. I had faced moments like this before and triumphed, like against New Zealand in 2013 when I scored my maiden century to silence those who believed I was not up to the task. But the sense of dread remained as I walked past the line of assembled MCC members, through the famous Long Room and descended the steps from the pavilion and into the sunshine.

I walked through the picket gate and looked up and out, trying to drink in the wonderful atmosphere to settle my nerves. Should I look at the Denis Compton grandstand? I wondered. No, I decided. Grandad’s feats suddenly hung like a shadow rather than a source of inspiration, the hammer in my chest the expectation of failure rather than Robertson-Glasgow’s hope of a big score. At that moment, on a stage built for the name Compton to shine, something had changed inside me.

I blocked the last two deliveries of Herath’s over and then watched Alastair play out a maiden over from Suranga Lakmal. As I waited for Herath again, a thought flashed through my mind:

I can’t do this any more.

Patience and resilience, the ingredients of my success, were suddenly monotonous. I didn’t want to go through the routine of an hour of pain to reap the rewards of later, patient runs. The thought shocked me. My brain had gone and I wanted to walk off the ground. I was shot. Useless. My body was screaming at my brain, ‘What’s going on? I felt like a marathon runner exhausted at the start line thinking about the 26 miles ahead of him. But my brain wouldn’t listen. It was heartbreaking, battling with myself in the middle of Lord’s, in front of thousands of people including my father, Richard. It was as if the 25,000 spectators could all see what had just gone on inside my head.

I had never felt this way before. Normally when I was at the crease I was steely and resolved, but the fight had gone. Somehow I pulled myself together and managed to get off the mark with a single to mid-off, but the dismay had set in as I defended without conviction, almost hoping that a delivery would get past me and end the misery.

I got my wish two overs later when Lakmal pitched one up and the ball moved ever so slightly away down the Lord’s slope. I wasn’t far enough forward and reached away from my body, getting a faint edge and was caught behind. I felt the sorry silence as I walked off the ground.

The runaway train had finally come off the tracks.

Chapter 1

Old and new

Iam an unfinished person.

When I first thought about writing a book, the term autobiography didn’t sound quite right. I had retired as a professional athlete but it seemed far too early in my life to review its ups and downs. More to the point, I questioned whether I had achieved enough to warrant a book. Sure, I played Test cricket for England – only 653 people had achieved that honour when I was capped in 2012 – but I had fallen short of my potential and expectations, so I had to ask if my story would make a meaningful contribution to the game I love.

But on reflection I believe that these flaws are actually the strengths of my story; a life in motion, both successful and imperfect, conflicted by battles with mental illness and now in the midst of change, not just in circumstances but in a sense of the person I am, and whom I want to become, all against the backdrop of my family’s cricketing legacy as the grandson of English cricket icon, Denis Compton CBE.

At the time of writing, I have just turned thirty-nine years old. I played sixteen Test matches for England between 2012 and 2016, during which time I was part of teams that won a Test series in India for the first time in almost thirty years and also defeated South Africa on their home turf. I hit more than 12,000 runs in first-class cricket for Middlesex and Somerset, including twenty-seven centuries, and finished with a decent average of 40.42.

But that career is over, and my challenge now is to find the new Nick for my new life. After all, given reasonable health I am not even halfway through my existence. But to do that I have to re-examine and learn from the old Nick, and that is what this book is all about; reliving what has happened to this point in my life and reflecting on my decisions, good and bad, so I might learn about myself and can get on with the next stage of life and, in doing so, hopefully help others who are struggling with similar problems. Being grateful and giving back.

The old Nick. It seems a strange description, given that it is about my younger self. Perhaps former is more accurate, although that implies a desire to shed a skin and rid myself of that character, and that would be just as bad as not changing. I want to evolve; to keep the best bits of young Nick and add life skills and technique to get better, just as the thousands of hours of practice I sweated in the nets over the years made me a better batsman.

The old Nick had the focus and desire to get to the top of his chosen profession; to become an elite cricketer who played for England, scored two Test centuries and helped his team win four of the five series in which he played.

And yet I continue to live with regret – some of my own making and some the creation of others – and struggle to regard what I achieved as success. To me, it reeked of failure because of what I didn’t do. Some would agree with that sentiment but there are others around me – people I trust – who tell me that my greatest personal challenge is to accept what I achieved and move on. That I need to be comfortable with myself. Sure, I should continue to strive to be the best I can at what I do, but not to place success, as I see it, at the centre of my world.

This is not easy. Not with my complex personality. I am, I admit, a flawed man who has had to contend with mental illness throughout my life. I know this and I rail against it every single day. I have always struggled against insecurities, real and imagined, and to feel as if I belong. I’ve batted away suicidal thoughts on occasions, and even wondered about how to end my life. I’ve drawn the curtains and hidden, distraught in my hotel room away from my teammates during a Test match tour and cried uncontrollably driving home from a county match, simply because I’d got out due to a stupid loss of concentration.

These feelings are raw; they hurt although the anxieties and crippling vacillation remain mostly hidden. Most people only see a six-foot-two, blond and blue-eyed athlete who seems slightly arrogant and speaks his mind, at times with little or no filter. I have been misunderstood and, at times, dealt with unfairly as an outsider; somebody with talent – natural and practised – but frequently too difficult to deal with, too opinionated and emotional.

Rather than acknowledge and reassure me about my best attributes and help me cope with my worst frailties, it was easier to set me aside and try someone more stable. With better management, I could have been a longer-term part of English cricket that for eight years after my last Test for England could not find a successful opening partnership.

This failure was, of course, partly due to me, my performances and my personality, but it was also partly to do with a creaky, old boys system that still struggles to recognise outsiders or those who don’t quite fit the English mould. Someone like me.

This book, then, is a story rather than a record of triumph. It is a memoir but it is also a book from which I can create a new, more resilient and more resourceful me, and give some guidance to future players about what it takes, not only to get to the top in terms of work ethic and determination, but also the importance of taking the rough with the smooth; to back yourself but be comfortable with your mistakes as much as the successes.

Elite sport is not only about physical skill and dedication but also about being a complete person. Those who succeed at the highest level for the longest time generally manage to balance those aspects of their character.

I am not alone with many of these challenges, but my story is unique because I made a pact with a legacy that with hindsight I had almost no chance of satisfying. Now it’s my turn. But what legacy can I leave?

Chapter 2

Grandad

My grandfather was not only regarded as one of the best batsmen of his generation, but among the greatest cricketers ever to play the game. Denis Charles Scott Compton, youngest son of a painter and decorator from North London, was an entertainer, wielding a rapier made of willow who made England cheer again in the dark post-war days of austerity. He brought instinct, flair and vibrancy to the game, standing up to the ‘Invincibles’ Australian side led by Don Bradman in 1948 and hitting the winning runs when England finally reclaimed the Ashes in 1953 in front of a baying crowd at The Oval.

His iconic stature was probably best captured by the great writer Neville Cardus who wrote of his phenomenal performances in the summer of 1947 when he scored 3,816 runs at an average of 90, including 18 centuries:

‘Never have I been so deeply touched on a cricket ground as in this heavenly summer, when I went to Lord’s to see a pale-faced crowd, existing on rations, the rocket-bomb still in the ears of most, and see the strain of anxiety and affliction passed from all hearts and shoulders at the sight of Compton in full sail, sending the ball here, there and everywhere, each stroke a flick of delight, a propulsion of happy, sane, healthy life. There were no rations in an innings by Compton.’

But to a young boy growing up five decades later in faraway South Africa, he was just Grandad who once played Test cricket for England and football for England and Arsenal (with whom he won the League Cup and the FA Cup) and advertised a mysterious hair gel called Brylcreem. I was proud, obviously, and had posters and photographs of him on my bedroom walls, caressing the cricket ball through square leg or dressed like James Bond in black tie while signing autographs for wide-eyed girls.

But I was too young at that stage to really understand what he had achieved. On the few occasions that I was in his company it would not have occurred to me to ask him what it was like facing Ray Lindwall or Keith Miller, the Australian quick bowlers of his day. I was more interested in my own, present-day heroes; I wanted to be one of the South African stars, Jacques Kallis or Jonty Rhodes or Andrew Hudson.

I didn’t see much of Grandad when I was a kid, other than a handful of trips he made to South Africa or the few occasions that we came to London. He was an unseen presence in our lives, the reason that people in the street and the sporting clubs of Durban knew our names, although not one to mention in front of his ex-wife, my late, rather regal grandmother, Valerie.

The first visit I recall was when I was about eight years old and a tearaway striker for the local football club. It was the first sport in which I had showed real promise, selected in underage Natal teams. I was quick and incredibly competitive, even at that age, and out to impress my famous relative. If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still smell the orange wedges the coach was handing out at half-time that day in a small suburban park while Grandad sat watching from a rickety grandstand by the side of the pitch.

I scored a hat-trick and one goal, in particular, was spectacular. I was playing on the left-hand side of the pitch where I got the ball and dribbled down the touchline before switching inside, around an opponent to the edge of the box and hitting it into the top right-hand corner of the net, just like he used to do when he played for Arsenal. My father remembers Grandad leaping in the air despite his gammy knees and yelling ‘That’s my boy’ as I scored.

Grandad came back to Durban a couple of years later and visited my prep school. It was at this moment that I had an inkling of just how famous he was when the headmaster and teachers rolled out the red carpet for him. Everyone was in awe of Denis Compton, and I could now picture what it was like to be a champion.

I was twelve years old when he first saw me play cricket, not in Durban but in England. I had come on a school tour, accompanied by Dad, and stayed with him at his home in Burnham Beeches, in Buckinghamshire. He came to watch me in a match played at the nearby Caldicott School where I think I got 45 out of the team’s total of 120.

Dad told me that Grandad had turned to him and said something like: ‘You know, he’s got some fight in him, this kid.’ Those sorts of comments really meant something to an impressionable child, not just in the moment but as my career went through its ups and downs. Whatever anyone else observed of me out there in the middle, fight was the word that came to define my own view of myself.

Dad and I stayed on with Grandad for a week after that tour, during which time there was another significant moment for me. I was in his back garden one day, practising diligently as Dad patiently threw balls. Grandad was watching, sitting at a table on the veranda sipping brandy, as was his wont. I was trying to show him how straight my bat was, blocking the ball carefully back to Dad, but after watching for a while, Grandad blurted out: ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, just hit the bloody thing.’

I never forgot that, not just because of the way he shouted it in frustration but because, like the word ‘fight’, it became very pertinent to my career. In my worst times, when my confidence was low, I had a tendency to overthink things and become too technical. There were times when I got stuck like that out in the middle and I’d just remember his words and think, Oh for fuck’s sake, stand still and just hit the damn thing. It made the game simple.

As much as we were compared during my playing career, the truth was that Grandad and I were cut from very different cricketing cloth. I mean, I was into fitness and health drinks and he had the fortitude of an ox, getting to the ground after a night partying and then going out with a bat borrowed from a tail-ender and scoring a century. That was the mythology at least.

He had real charisma on and off the field, a man of the people long after he finished playing who, when not at Lord’s, could usually be found at a private members’ club, The Cricketers, off Baker Street where he was president and used to go for long lunches most afternoons, holding court with his lunch companions and other admirers in the restaurant who would gather to hear him tell stories. He had this manner where he would lower his voice, almost to a whisper, to ensure that people would crowd forward to hear what he had to say before launching into a rakish story about his friendship and adventures with his great mate, the Australian all-rounder Keith Miller with whom he had battled for the treasured Ashes.

The Brylcreem (an emulsion of water and mineral oil stabilised with beeswax) that defined his image as a player was long gone and his jet-black hair was now a lush silver, but he cut a broadening but well-dressed figure who could speak with a clipped accent despite his working-class background.

He was also Middlesex president at the time and took me around Lord’s one day, past the stand that bears his name. Here I was, a twelve-year-old with eyes as big as dinner plates, walking around the palace of cricketing dreams. It cemented my desire to play there, particularly when he arranged for me to pad up and face Mark Ramprakash and Gus Fraser in the nets. I couldn’t have guessed then that Gus would be my captain five years later when I made my debut for Middlesex. It’s unfortunate that Grandad wasn’t around to see it. He died the year after that memorable underage tour, aged seventy-eight.

Was Grandad an influence on my life as a cricketer? Of course he was. Was he the reason that I wanted to play cricket? No, I had a bat in my hand from the age of three, although his achievements were certainly a driving force for me to succeed at the highest level. His legacy did not ensure my selection to play Test cricket but it cleared away some of the branches hanging across the pathway towards the top, especially in the early days when the name Compton meant something in a place like Natal.

But there was a flip side to this legacy. The shadow of expectation and comparison was constantly on my shoulder. I did not feel it so much as a youngster, but the higher I climbed in the game the more it bore down on me. For the most part I didn’t feel the pressure, especially when I was playing well, but I could sense in others the rush to compare, particularly in the media which either delighted in slicking back my hair with Brylcreem for photo shoots or, when I was down and struggling, drawing unflattering comparisons between my slow, methodical batting and his cavalier scoring. But I don’t remember ever thinking I’m not as good as Grandad. I just wanted to be the best player that Nick Compton could be.

Some of this analysis was, of course, valid. After all, cricket is a game of statistics, and I am the first to acknowledge that performance is everything in terms of team selection. But statistics can also be misleading – between matches and seasons, let alone generations – so they should always be made carefully with context.

Our challenges were different. It was much less about brawn and power back when he played. The bats were thinner and lighter and the pitches weren’t as good, so the sweep and the late cut were examples of the touch and the ability to manoeuvre the ball rather than just hit through the line. Batting techniques were more individual.

I was brought up on coaching manuals and bowling machines, heavier bats, true pitches and raw, fast bowlers. My visual cues came through hours of television and video analysis, watching the best players and copying techniques. It was one of the many differences that makes a direct comparison between Denis Compton and his grandson Nick across sixty years neither flattering nor fair.

*

Grandad had another significant influence on my life which had nothing to do with cricket.

As much as I don’t like to say it, I don’t believe he was a terrific father. He was a man of the people but that devotion came at a cost to his own family. My grandmother Valerie Platt was his second wife, an heiress to a sugar plantation whom he married in 1951. There is a short video of the wedding on YouTube which showed the media excitement of the event and the vast seafront plantation her family, the Platts, owned at Isipingo on the outskirts of Durban.

Grandad was filmed lighting his fiancée’s cigarette, arm in arm as they walked down the path to the Old Fort Chapel in the centre of the capital, surrounded by cameramen, although she seems to be leading him. In contrast to his easy smile, hers is tight although it was probably nerves. He was forty-three years old, his cricket career coming to an end, and she was just twenty-four. The marriage ended, effectively at least, nine years later when she took the youngest of their two sons – my father Richard who was aged five – and returned from London to Durban to raise him on her own.

It was said later that Valerie was homesick, hated the dank English weather and wanted her sons to grow up with sunshine on their backs, but it only partly rings true. It wasn’t that easy to get divorced in those days so a deal was reached in which Patrick would stay with Denis and Dad would go to South Africa with his mum who then packed him off to boarding school at the age of seven. Patrick was also dispatched to boarding school and hardly ever saw his father, instead fostered out to a family named Wallace during most holidays. Separating the brothers had an effect on both of them.

My uncle eventually returned to South Africa to attend university. He became a leading sports journalist and once considered writing a book about Denis but didn’t go ahead: ‘Who am I to dismantle a legend?’ was his explanation, which gives a hint of the darkness that lay in our family.

I loved Grandad, but it is true that he preferred the company of his mates at the pub and the cricket club rather than the domestic environment of the family home. Amazingly, he married for a third time in his sixties and had two daughters who I hope had better childhood memories than their half-brothers.

The decisions that Grandad made and the life he led had an impact, not just on his children but, I believe, also on the next generation. One incident in particular embodies the attitude Grandad had to being a parent. He had made a rare visit to South Africa one year, long before I was born, and was going to see Dad who was a young boy playing cricket for his school, Michaelhouse. The famous cricketer arrived at the school to much fanfare but was promptly whisked away by a few of his friends who hauled him off to the local pub, missing the game and leaving Dad embarrassed and deflated.

I have fond memories of being around Grandad – as few as those were – and, on reflection, I think his presence also brought my dad alive a bit as well, perhaps filling the deep need that he must still have felt growing up without a father figure. We’ve never spoken about it. Maybe we should.

Most memorable was the night we all attended the filming of the TV programme This is Your Life. I was almost four years old and Alex was just six weeks old. We had flown over from South Africa to stand behind the curtain in the television studio with other members of his family and friends from around the world, while Grandad was led on to the stage on the pretence that he was being interviewed. That’s when the curtain opened and Mum remembers his honest response – ‘You’re joking!!’ It was all very exciting, especially when I was allowed to attend the post-event party. I ended up guiding my rather merry father back to the Tube station afterwards.

Chapter 3

The obsession

Ihave never considered myself to be normal ; in fact, I have always railed against the description. What is normal anyway? The more we learn about the human brain, the more we realise that there is

Reviews for Legacy

[vanessacw · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A family drama story about a man who, suffering from a terminal illness, plans for his own death, leaving a Will with a legacy to be disposed of as his three children wish. It may sound uncomplicated but it’s not as easy as that! I enjoyed this slow burner of a tale . It’s very much a character based story, none of them at first seeming particularly pleasant. But, of course, as it progresses, we see them evolving. Family dynamics are really well depicted and the siblings’ individual journeys and their interactions with each other make for an interesting and tense read. I loved how they all came together at the end as well as the separate concluding chapters for each character. It’s not an action packed tale, more of what I would class as a ‘slice of life’ story. It definitely gives food for thought!

[linda.a. · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Publisher’s synopsisA death in the family rarely brings out the best in people - even the deceased Jonathan Coulter planned for his death meticulously, leaving nothing to chance. His will states that his three adult children must decide between them how to dispose of his estate. If they cannot come together over their inheritance, then they risk losing it. But Liv, Noah and Chloe never agree on anything. And now, with only one weekend to overcome their rivalry, tensions begin to rise. Why has Jonathan left the decision to them? And why has he made no mention of his new partner, Megan, or the children's mother, Eloise? If he wanted to teach them a lesson from beyond the grave, what is it? And can the siblings put their differences aside for long enough to learn it? A powerful novel about love and loss, and what we truly pass on to our children.Following their initial shock when they were told about their father’s will, in which the only specific instruction he left was for a lump sum to be given to Lisa, his carer, Liv, Noah and Chloe realise that, having been appointed joint executors, they have no option but to find a way to act cooperatively if they are to fulfil his final wishes. In order to reach an outcome on which they can all agree, they decide they need to spend a weekend together at their childhood home, the house in which a grieving Megan is still living, having moved in with their father five years earlier. As the story unfolds it exposes layer upon layer of old rivalries and resentments between the three siblings, feelings which, it soon becomes clear, have continued to affect their behaviour and interactions as adults. Liv, the eldest, has a successful career and has always been the responsible, well-organised one; Noah appears to be wary of commitment, selfish, competitive and instinctively rebellious, whilst Chloe is the over-indulged youngest, who still has no idea what she wants to do with her life and, for a few months has been living back in the family home. As the weekend progresses, all their juvenile feelings are resurrected, often erupting in a disturbingly visceral way, as they struggle to reach agreement on how to comply with their father’s wishes and settle his estate.Not included in any of their discussions, in fact, with her presence barely even acknowledged, Megan is expected to cater for her late partner’s offspring, forced to be a reluctant witness to their endless squabbling whilst struggling with her own grief over the death of her partner. Their ongoing resentment of her as the blameworthy ‘other woman’ in their parents’ divorce, shows itself in myriad ways in their interactions with her, perhaps never more so when they invite their mother to join them for the weekend – although she at least does have the grace to stay in a local hotel! I found this to be an exceptionally well-executed exploration of family dynamics in the aftermath of a death, a time when emotions are heightened and people are at their most vulnerable. I think that through her credible, well- developed characters, the author captured the complex interrelationships and ambivalences which exist within families and how, when faced with any sort of crisis, previously buried resentments and rivalries bubble to the surface, demanding to be addressed before any rational decision-making can take place. I was impressed throughout by her empathetic portrayal of her characters’ rapidly fluctuating emotional reactions, their shifting alliances, the conflicts they each felt as they struggled to reconcile personal expectations with a desire to ‘do the right thing’. Her masterly use of a third person narrative enabled me to very quickly feel caught up in the intense, painful rawness of their emotions. Throughout the story I felt my sympathies and alliances shifting as she gradually revealed their personal histories, demonstrating how their experiences and their firmly-established roles in the family were influencing not only their reactions to their father’s death, but also to the fundamentally-contentious and ambiguous nature of his will – at times I think I probably felt as angry with him as everyone else did about the power he was continuing to exert! I thought that the resolutions for each of the characters, as well as the final decisions about the dispersal of Jonathan’s estate, were entirely credible and liked the fact that these contained surprises which enabled me, even in the closing pages of the story, to gain extra insights into the characters’ behaviour. A theme which ran through the story explored the emotional and physical effects on people caring for someone with a terminal illness, particularly as the ‘patient’ becomes increasingly dependent on carers to attend to the most basic of physical needs. I think the author very perceptively captured how the relationship between Megan and Jonathan was affected by his illness and the increasing stresses she faced as his physical condition worsened. The author brought similar insights to her exploration of the impact Lisa, the part-time carer employed to help during the final months of his life, had on both Megan and Jonathan. Her descriptions of Megan feeling overwhelmed by the relentless pressure, the sense of guilt she felt about needing help, as well as the eventual rivalry she felt about sharing his care with an outsider, captured many of the complex, ambivalent feelings experienced by carers. Although most of the ‘action’ takes place in the increasingly tense, stifling and claustrophobic atmosphere of the family home, there is occasional relief from this when the characters venture out into the bracing air of Scarborough. These outings not only bring back some happier memories, but also enable some shifts in perspective which, in turn, lead to some changes in behaviour. I know the town well so was delighted to be allowed to ‘revisit’ it, to see its essential ‘character’ so evocatively portrayed – and to be reminded that a walk along the front really can do much to blow away some emotional cobwebs! I’ve read only one of Caroline Bond’s previous novels (One Split Second) but it seems to me that what she excels at is her ability to capture the nuances of family relationships, warts and all, thus enabling her readers to identify with the struggles her characters face – as well as to make allowances for all the things they get wrong as they attempt to resolve them! I imagine it would be all but impossible for anyone to read this book without imagining how they and their relatives would behave in similar circumstances. The explorations of loss, grief, how families cope when under intense pressure, the exposure of lies and acts of betrayal, the struggle between a sense of personal ‘entitlement’ and a recognition of the need to make decisions which are ethically, and morally, right, the power of family bonds etc, are all themes which would make this novel an ideal choice for book groups. With thanks to Readers First and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.