Can you write a page-turning novel about Live-in care? Most definitely!
This entertaining novel (The carer) explores the relationship which develop between an elderly retired professor, his new live-in carer and his grown-up son and daughter.
Lonely and depressed after the death of his wife, James, a retired professor of physics, falls down the stairs at his home in the Cotswolds, at which point, his daughter Phoebe and his son Robert decide he needs full-time live-in care.
After two false starts, a live-in carer named. Mandy arrives from Solihull in a Fiat Panda and initially appears to be the answer to everyone’s prayers. She is large and jolly and very capable and quickly forms a close bond with James, to the extent that Phoebe starts to feel distinctly jealous. At the same time, she and her brother Robert are both relieved and grateful that, thanks to Phoebe’s larger-than-life presence, their father now seems a lot happier than at any time since before their mother died.
However, it is not long before signs emerge that Mandy is steadily taking over: calling their father “Jimmy” when everyone has always called him James, taking him to the doctor’s without mentioning it to his family and taking him out on trips in her car to retail parks and other places, which he would never previously have been remotely interested in visiting.
Phoebe and Robert’s misgivings gradually turn to outright suspicion when they discover that, on one of their outings, Mandy took him to visit a flat in a nearby town that one of her previous clients apparently left her in his will, while on another occasion they went to see his solicitor in Oxford together. At this point the plot takes a series of unexpected twists, which gradually reveal to his children the startling truth about their father’s earlier life.
The story is bittersweet yet fulfilling and is entertainingly told with insight, humour and not a little wisdom. Highly recommended The Carer by Deborah Moggach | Goodreads. If you want to arrange care click Contact Chesterford Homecare.
