Book Review: The First Day of Spring by Nancy Tucker
Publication Day: 18th May 2021
Published by: Cornerstone Digital
‘So that was all it took,’ I thought. ‘That was all it took for me to feel like I had all the power in the world.
One morning, one moment, one yellow-haired boy. It wasn’t so much after all.’
Chrissie knows how to steal sweets from the shop without getting caught, the best hiding place for hide-and-seek, the perfect wall for handstands.
Now she has a new secret. It gives her a fizzing, sherbet feeling in her belly. She doesn’t get to feel power like this at home, where food is scarce and attention scarcer.
Fifteen years later, Julia is trying to mother her five-year-old daughter, Molly. She is always worried – about affording food and school shoes, about what the other mothers think of her. Most of all she worries that the social services are about to take Molly away.
That’s when the phone calls begin, which Julia is too afraid to answer, because it’s clear the caller knows the truth about what happened all those years ago.
And it’s time to face the truth: is forgiveness and redemption ever possible for someone who has killed?
MY REVIEW
Gosh, this was a tough book. Weirdly not because of what had happened, because yes that is shocking and horrifying. But I found it tough because of what happened to Chrissie and how she was treated. Her entire life she was let down, and I will never look at Smarties the same way. It was shocking and damn right awful what happened to her. Chrissie didn’t ask for any of that, and sadly she rebelled. However, this “rebellion” is not what we would consider normal, but you can see something break within her. How she described the judge, as the man in the white wig, and Linda’s mum and her speech was heartbreaking for someone so young to hear. Someone so broken. She was not a happy child, she wasn’t wanted by anyone and tried to force herself on her friends and families, to make them like her. All she wanted was to be loved and she needed to be rescued.
Julia, a woman who is trying to run for her past, is just sad and existing, not living. Trying to “outrun” her past, but can anyone? Molly was her beacon of light, no idea of the inner turmoil of her mum.
It’s not an easy book, and even though the ending happened, I didn’t find it a happy one to some extent. The only way I can think of this being happy is if changes happened. If Julia made something of herself and found a way to live with her past and give Molly the future she deserves.
It’s not an easy book to read, or listen to, which is what I did. The narrator got the aggression of Chrissie to a T. She got the hollowness of Julia too. The narrator truly captured the despair within these pages. It’s a book that could haunt you for a while.
Until the next time xxx
About Nancy Tucker
Nancy Tucker was born and raised in West London. She spent most of her adolescence in and out of hospital suffering from anorexia nervosa. On leaving school, she wrote her first book, THE TIME IN BETWEEN (Icon, 2015) which explored her experience of eating disorders and recovery. Her second book, THAT WAS WHEN PEOPLE STARTED TO WORRY (Icon, 2018), looked more broadly at mental illness in young women.
Nancy recently graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Experimental Psychology. Since then she has worked in an inpatient psychiatric unit for children and adolescents and in adult mental health services. She now works as an assistant psychologist in an adult eating disorders service. The First Day of Spring is her first work of fiction.
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