Eleanor Thom

Connective Tissue is a dual-timeline story set in Scotland in 2010 and Berlin in the 1930s. Helena is an air-traffic controller pregnant with her first baby, forced into a long hospital stay due to complications. When her baby is born he suffers from a kind of paralysis which has no obvious explanation. Looking back through her family roots, Helena starts to consider whether it might be a genetic condition and embarks on a journey to find out more about Dora, the grandmother she didn't know very well. Dora was a German Jew, a single mother unable to look after her daughter full-time in a country where her safety, and that of her family, was threatened more and more by the day.

The title of this book is clever, referring both to a medical condition that both Helena and Dora have, and to the connective tissue that binds them together through the generations of their family. There's also a theme of trees running throughout the book which felt like a metaphor for the family tree. Eleanor Thom's writing is contemplative and powerful, and knowing that she is in effect writing about her own family in fictionalised form makes this story even stronger and even more compelling. I didn't find it to be a quick read but it's a worthwhile one.

Connective Tissue is a haunting and moving story of motherhood and migration, and the invisible threads that link us to the past and made us who we are.… (mehr)

Nine pages in, this novel went all Trainspotting on me. The terrain seemed easy and then suddenly I found myself needing a sturdy pair of walking boots. Dialect, thick thick dialect, describing events I couldn’t follow. I was nervous that I wasn’t going to like or understand it, but all was well in the end.

Despite my misgivings, I would have to say the voice throughout was spot on. And I’ll spare the rant over absent speech marks, though it’s not a style I like. The whole thing had a windswept, slightly numb feel to it. The voices of the historical characters were excellent – gradations in dialect, the way personalities were revealed, one felt immersed in the culture of the traveller community at that time. I am sure the author had done her homework, but even if she hadn’t I would have believed this account, so rich in detail was the prose.

I was surprised how early the central secret came out. There seemed little left to reveal – mostly things I had worked out. There were cleverly dropped clues along the way, meaning the reader could join the dots; what remained at the end was personality time and atmospherics. I really felt as though I was inhabiting a 3D world.

A glossary might have helped with the early stages, though finding one’s way through the dialect chapters unaided does give the reader a sense of achievement.… (mehr)

Three stories told over three time spans all link together to uncover the tragic death of a young traveller lad. He takes to his grave a secret that is known only to a few of his family members. As the story unravels modern day blends with the past and family connections are re-forged.

Thom has written a moving tale, filled with love, pride, dignity and respect, about a community whose lifestyle is often misunderstood. She brings to life the old traditions and ways of travellers, shows the depth of love they have for each and manages to dispel some of the stereotypical myths that surround the traveller way of life.

Told in the vernacular, I loved hearing Scottish and traveller Kant mixed in with modern day English. There is no glossary as the author keeps everything in context, making it fairly simple to glean the meaning of words that may have been previously unknown to the reader.… (mehr)