Needlemouse

by Jane O’Connor

When I first started to read this book I really started to have a few reservations about it. As I felt that the main character (Sylvia) was living in her own delusional world. Where she is so infatuated with her boss that she was reading far more in to their work relationship than what was really going on. It made me feel as though I wanted to go up to her and shake some scene in to her.

The more I got into the book the more I started to understand Sylvia and her situation and why she was this way. Like it says on the cover of the book she needed to come out of hibernation.

I also enjoyed “The Hedgehog Year” by Jonas Entwistle, which will become clearer as to why there so many references to Hedgehogs the more you read the book.

Sylvia is living in her own delusional world. She is a PA for Professor Carl Lomax at the University (Prof as she likes to call him). She takes pride in thinking she knows everything about him and how he likes everything, as well as shielding him from students or anyone one else who just happens to turn up in his office without an appointment. Sylvia comes across as a battle axe where her prof is concerned thinking that she knows whats best for him.

Sylvia spends most of her time out of the work place fantasising about her Prof leaving his wife for her and for them to walk off in to the sunset together. However after Sylvia is dismissed from her job, due to misconduct she is at a huge loss, and maybe she doesn’t know Prof like she thought she did.

Also her relationship with her sister and husband has gone from being strained to Sylvia not existing. But Sylvia ends up with an allies in her niece Crystal and the more time they spend together the more she realises Crystal is more like her than her loud and flamboyant mother.

So this just leaves Sylvia with her volunteering at the hedgehog sanctuary helping Jonas Entwistle to carrying on with the hedgehog sanctuary that his wife started years ago and it’s Jonas’ way of keeping his wife alive.

With Sylvia loosing her job is this is the turning point in her life where she slowly starts to finally live her life instead of hibernating. She is very much like a hedgehog prickly on the outside but soft and vulnerable in the middle.

I really enjoyed this book it’s not like most books out there, and it about a lonely woman in her 50’s who really isn’t living a full life.

Pages: 352. Publication Date: 27 June 2019. My Rating: