Sinead Cuddihy
π€ SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Yeah sure thanks Clare.
So basically it is about a woman called Dawn Bishop and we start out with her age 16 getting the boat from her home in Trinidad over to Venezuela.
She's 16 years of age, she's pregnant, it's a crisis pregnancy and this is the decision that her family have made for her that she goes to a sort of similar to what we would have had here a mother and baby institution where she then gives that baby up for adoption.
Then we meet her 40 years down the line.
She's gone through, you know, all her studies.
She's got married.
She's had two sons and she's now divorced and living in England where she's, you know, spent the last 40 years.
And she's sort of trying to figure out her past, trying to find out maybe what happens to the baby that she gave away all those years ago.
And obviously through, you know, modern technology and science is trying to see if that person can be traced.
So it kind of takes us back and forth again.
throughout her life and between her growing up in Trinidad and her life in England and all about sort of the choices she's made and where she's ended up in her life versus what she would have expected maybe prior to that boat trip.
Especially because, you know, her family are fruit farmers and they make fruit juice.
And there's all these descriptions of fruits that I'd never even heard of before reading the book.
So, yeah, it's really enjoyable in that way.
Yeah, and I think, you know, it's her fourth experience of this, of connecting with somebody who may or may not be her child.
And, you know, so she's almost guiding this woman who she's never met and she doesn't actually know she is her daughter, but she's guiding her as if she was her child through that process as well, because she's experienced it.
So you even have her mothering this, you know, woman who may or may not be her daughter.
And so I found that really interesting as well, how like, you know, she's
just experiencing motherhood at all these different stages in her life and with these different people.
And, you know, we're trying to find out throughout those late stages in the book whether or not that person is her daughter.