Cassie finally gets an address for her natural mother, Christine, and goes to her house. (I’m considering that the novel may begin with Cassie’s journey to the house and the door starting to open, with mystery surrounding where she is going, why, and who opens the door….) The surprise is that Cassie’s natural father is there, and it is not who Cassie (and the reader) has been led to think it will be. Cassie is shocked and angered that she had not been told the truth sooner and walks out. She goes home to her husband (her first love, Joe, with whom she has become reunited earlier in the book and had a child). She gets a letter/phone call from Christine begging her to make it up with her father. Christine says she did not forgive her own father for not letting her keep the baby (Cassie) and he died before she had the chance to make it up to him. Cassie realises that all that she has now she owes to forgiveness, because when she met up with Joe again he forgave her for splitting up with him over a misunderstanding years before. The book ends with Cassie reaching out for the phone to ring her father (or him answering the phone and Cassie saying ‘Hello Dad, it’s me…’)
Forgiveness is a very powerful theme for a novel and this could work very well if handled carefully. I think ending the novel with Cassie saying 'Hello Dad it's me' would be a little too unresolved for the end of a novel - your readers may well feel you didnt have the strength (regardless of whether you did or not) to write the final scene. You might do better to write that scene, the climax, and then end the book on a more impressionistic note, or with a journey, with an observation of Cassie's, etc.
ReplyDeleteVery well thought through plot. Knowing how you create pace in the narrative, it all looks very promising. peter
ReplyDeleteI think your idea of the book beginning with the slow walk to the door but holding back on what comes next is really excellent and would keep a reader - well me certainly transfixed to know how it ends. Good if you don't have that awful habit of skipping to the last page! which luckily, I don't:-)
ReplyDelete