Negotiating Family Life:The Choice By Penny Hancock

Renee Gulliver is a relationships therapist but work and family can throw up very different problems and your own family relationships are often much harder to identify and negotiate than those of strangers. As they say ‘the cobbler’s children are often the worst shod’.

Outwardly, the Gullivers appear to be the perfect family and to ‘have it all’. They and their beautiful period home have even been featured in an interiors magazine, even though the article made Renee cringe. Renee is the daughter of an old lady who, with her French chic, had been the epitome of elegance but now has dementia. Renee is the wife of Tobias, a once ambitious, clever man of principle, now struck down by a stroke. Furthermore, she is mother to three grown up children: Mia, the hardworking teacher who prides herself on her perfection but who is now split from her ‘perfect’ husband, Eddie, who, in turn, has managed to gamble away all their savings; George, who, despite horrific facial scarring caused by a childhood accident, is still the incredibly handsome actor who oozes charm; and Irena, the middle child, impetuous, careless and estranged, who walked out of the family home one day and cut herself off, going to Paris to become a climate activist. She didn’t even come home when her father suffered his stroke and it was thought he might not survive. For that, Mia and Tobias have disowned her completely. Finally, Renee is the doting grandmother to six year old Xavier whose name ‘begins with a kiss’. (I loved that description).


The novel opens with the most horrifying incident. The doting grandmother has forgotten about the altered childcare arrangements which meant she was expected to pick Xavier up from school that day. Racing there, an hour and a half late, he is gone. He is a bright child who believes ‘he knows his way to the nature reserve’, but at only six-years-old, he doesn’t know the tides – and anyway, he’s not there. The teacher on duty believes he was picked up by someone he knew. His estranged father hasn’t got him and the police can find no trace.

Renee’s guilt knows no bounds especially as she has a secret. She had been distracted, had deliberately collected Tobias’ medicine on her way home to give her an excuse for being late. She had been seen near the houseboat belonging to Jonah, a single man, and the locals begin to talk. Her daughter cannot trust her anymore and denies her access to her grandson. Her clients begin to question her reliability. How quickly life unravels.

The cause is Irena, home, or at least back in East Lea, and in need of a roof over her head, financial support and sympathy. Renee could never understand why her daughter left so suddenly. She may have been a difficult child but that was no reason to leave the way she did. Renee needs to find out what drove her away – wants, no, it’s more than that, she needs to talk to her younger daughter to re-affirm the mother and daughter bond. Tobias is no longer able or willing to share the burden. George is rarely at home and Mia wants nothing to do with her sister. When Xavier is returned to the fold, Mia gives her mother an agonizing decision to make: which daughter? It seems she cannot have both.

A lack of understanding, an inability to talk, the belief that accusations wrongly made in the past cannot be put right, and the effect of childhood trauma, leave festering wounds. Renee cannot believe she could have made so many mistakes, been so blind as to allow life and its troubles to creep up on them as it has. Old lies and hidden truths prove almost too destructive and reveal human frailty, in this thought-provoking tale.

The cast of characters, family, friends, colleagues and patients are richly detailed and credible, their emotions powerful and understandable. Each has their part. The coastal setting is beautiful and raw. Jonah was once Renee’s mentor and when she turns to him, his advice ‘to keep a little bit of our inner selves alive, even when we have people who seem to need us…’ is worth heeding - by us all.