I couldn't fully understand why Tia was there as a character because she had no real emotional connection with her employer and therefore it seemed odd that she would be visiting her in hospital. In talking to her sister's inert body, Jo shows her misunderstanding of a normal human relationship and although I started to feel a little sorry for her, I also wanted to shake her and tell her to let the nurses/doctors do their job and stop trying to do strange experiments. I couldn't tell you what genre this book is because i found it dark, funny, moving it was so much more than i was expecting after reading some of the mixed reviews. I think she’s fabulous and very funny and the only time I’ve ever been reprimanded on an airplane was when I was watching The Vicar of Dibley and laughing too loud.

It's ironic that Silvia is the focus of this novel, because as a reader, I never got a sense of who she was or what exactly motivated her actions. When Dawn French wrote her first novel A Tiny Bit Marvellous I was eager to read it, looking forward to plenty of silly humour and those elusive-when-reading out loud laughs.I spent the majority thinking, well this isn't funny, she'd never be allowed to light candles in a real hospital because the alarms would go off and she'd be chucked out on her ear by security. It would absolutely not have been hard for an editor or a proof-reader to draw up a timeline to ensure basic consistency across the storylines rather than really gaping and unbelievable plot holes.

All centred around the now lifeless hub that is Silvia, the characters deal with their grief, guilt and fear, and it becomes clear - to them, and the reader - that humanity is a vital part of moving on in life.Winnie was very optimistic and talked to Silvia as if she was awake and chatting back which made me realise how difficult it must be to work as a nurse on such a ward with no interaction. My final thoughts about this book are that it seemed muddled, confused and there were quite a few issues with all of the main characters. These characters range from Silvia's family members, her friend, her cleaner to her nurse, Winnie, who really felt like the lynch-pin for the whole story. The writing style itself felt incredibly amateur, and maybe it's because I was writing my own novel at the same time, but it just seemed so cringeworthy and I could spot exactly the same tactics I was using to increase my word count without writing anything of quality.

The housekeeper Tia almost seemed like an irrelevant character only brought in to show cultural diversity and an extra point of view. I knew that the novel was supposed to be quite morbid but I imagined that with Dawn French behind the keyboard, there was sure to be level of humour, and in this I suppose I wasn't wrong.I was disappointed unfortunately, and actually came away from the book feeling annoyed with the characters and quite discouraged and depressed somehow. There isn't really a progressive plot as such, but this is more of a collection of memories, wishes and thoughts have about Silvia and how she has changed each narrator's life. Shunned by her daughter Cassie and son Jamie, cared for by nurse Winnie, visited by Tia her cleaner, Ed her ex husband and her eccentric sister Jo. That said, the characters are distinctive and you will love and/or hate them each in turn (I liked Cassie the best).