Publisher's Weekly
British author Hill ( Shakespeare Country ) writes with exquisite sensitivity on the worlds of meaning in the word ''family.'' She relates her life before and after marriage to Stanley Wells, a professor, and their joy in their first child, Jessica. A second daughter, born prematurely, survived only 33 days; Hill makes Imogen's brief life unforgettable and the parents' wrenching loss palpable. They later find great comfort in the birth of Clemency and in their memory of their cherished ''lily of a day.'' This is a book that speaks to us about the need for love and hope in the fight against despair. First serial to Woman magazine. (Jan.)
Library Journal
Readers of The Magic Apple Tree (Holt, 1983), Hill's description of a year with her Shakespeare-scholar husband and their young daughter in the English village of Barley, will find a more intensely personal portrait of the author in this story of Imogen, Hill's second child. Born three months prematurely, Imogen was treated with tenderness and heroic measures in the Special Care Baby Unit of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, where she died at the age of five weeks. This heart-wrenching yet clear-eyed tale of hope and anguish is written to help other women ''in the throes of trying to have a child,'' women who are ''vulnerable, afraid, depressed, bewildered, tired and isolated.'' To them she gives a ''message of hope that, however awful the disasters that may have struck them, however many the setbacks, things so often do go right in the end.'' Highly recommended for public library collections.-- Marcia G. Fuchs, Guilford Free Lib., Ct.
British author Hill ( Shakespeare Country ) writes with exquisite sensitivity on the worlds of meaning in the word ''family.'' She relates her life before and after marriage to Stanley Wells, a professor, and their joy in their first child, Jessica. A second daughter, born prematurely, survived only 33 days; Hill makes Imogen's brief life unforgettable and the parents' wrenching loss palpable. They later find great comfort in the birth of Clemency and in their memory of their cherished ''lily of a day.'' This is a book that speaks to us about the need for love and hope in the fight against despair. First serial to Woman magazine. (Jan.)
Library Journal
Readers of The Magic Apple Tree (Holt, 1983), Hill's description of a year with her Shakespeare-scholar husband and their young daughter in the English village of Barley, will find a more intensely personal portrait of the author in this story of Imogen, Hill's second child. Born three months prematurely, Imogen was treated with tenderness and heroic measures in the Special Care Baby Unit of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, where she died at the age of five weeks. This heart-wrenching yet clear-eyed tale of hope and anguish is written to help other women ''in the throes of trying to have a child,'' women who are ''vulnerable, afraid, depressed, bewildered, tired and isolated.'' To them she gives a ''message of hope that, however awful the disasters that may have struck them, however many the setbacks, things so often do go right in the end.'' Highly recommended for public library collections.-- Marcia G. Fuchs, Guilford Free Lib., Ct.
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