The best novelists make their writing seem effortless. When you read their stories you don’t even think about the writing and that’s tough for a fellow writer to do. But Hayley Linfield has accomplished this with her debut novel, The Truth about Dandelions.
Linfield is from Goderich and we have a mutual friend who told me about this novel a few months ago. I promptly forgot. But after we all ran into each other a couple of weeks ago at a play in that town, I bought Hayley’s book on Kobo and tucked in. I couldn’t put it down. I read while I cooked or straightened my hair and it kept me up past my bedtime.
The Truth about Dandelions centres on Mara, a university student who frequently gets drunk and sleeps around. It’s not unusual for the beautiful Mara to find herself in a disgusting, filthy apartment with a stranger in bed next to her. She might even escape to the street in the morning and have no idea where she is.
To say Mara wasn’t handled with care as a child is an understatement. She wasn’t abused in the traditional sense but the adults in her life were focused on their own unhappiness and unconcerned about the fragile emotions of a little girl. She’s accustomed to loss and even to blaming herself for losing people she loved. So she has found a way to numb herself, through meaningless sex. And that’s as much as I’ll reveal. I want you to be as surprised and entranced as I was by the changes in her life.
The story is unpredictable yet entirely believable. It’s so well written and by a third of the way into the story, which is told in present day and flashback to Mara as a child, Mara feels like a friend. When she engages in self-destructive behavior I wanted to scream at her to get it together. When she finally turns a bit vulnerable in the presence of a good heart, my own heart swelled with happiness for her. And all the while it kept me eager to find out what happens next. I loved this book. And the fact that Hayley Linfield is a local author is a bonus. Her work deserves a wide audience and I hope she gets one.
I absolutely agree with you. It was a wonderful book full of unashamed honesty. The character doesn’t have a clean cut path but I think we all kind of understand that.