About The Book
How do you cope in a world without your mother?
When Barbara realizes time is running out, she writes letters to her four daughters, aware they’ll be facing the trials and triumphs of life without her at their side. But how can she leave them when they still have so much growing up to do?
Take Lisa, in her mid-thirties but incapable of making a commitment; or Jennifer, trapped in a stale marriage and buttoned up so tight she could burst. While twentysomething Amanda is the traveler, always distanced from the rest of the family. And Hannah. A teenage girl on the verge of womanhood, about to be parted from the mother she adores.
But by drawing on the wisdom in Barbara’s letters, the girls might just find a way to cope with her loss. And in coming to terms with their bereavement, can they also set themselves free to enjoy life with all the passion and love each deserves?
From the Number One bestselling author of The Reading Group comes a novel you'll have to share with your mother, your daughter, your sister ... anyone you want to know how much you love them. Things I want my Daughters To Know is a tale of families, friends … and the glorious, endless possibilities of life.
Read an Extract
June 12th
Dear All of you,
Despite my controlling streak, there aren’t too many rules, so far as the funeral goes. Do it as soon as you can, won’t you? Good to get it over with. Lisa knows about the music, if you can bear to go with what I’ve chosen. We’ve talked about the committal - you know I only want you lot there, and you know which coffin, and which fabulous outfit. I’d like this poem – which, by the way, I love. Thank god for insomnia and the internet – I’d never have found it otherwise, and you’d be stuck reading something yucky. It should be read by whoever thinks they can do it without crying, because that is my biggest rule. No crying, please. If you can manage it. Oh, and no black. Wear the brightest thing you can find in your wardrobe. Both are clichés, I know, but better the colourful one than the sombre. And try and make the sun shine (although I recognize that this last one might be outside of your control). I’m not saying anything mushy in this letter – strictly business – but I daresay there will be other letters. I have other things to say, she says ominously - if I last long enough to write them... (don’t you just love terminal illness humour?).
I’m sorry you all have to do this; I really am.
So, never ever-ending love, as always ...
Mum
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there, I do not sleep
I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond light on snow
I am the sunlight on the ripened grain
I am the gently falling autumn rain
When you wake in the morning hush
I am the swift uplighting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight
I am the soft starlight at night
Do not stand at my grave and cry
I am not there, I did not die.
(Isn’t that perfect for a funeral in a field?!)
Lisa
Lisa lay back gingerly in her deep aromatherapy bubble bath and looked at the 8” x 10” picture she had taken from the top of the piano downstairs and brought up there with her. She’d propped it behind the taps so that she could see it clearly from where she lay in the steamy water, and now she was trying not to splash it. It was a black and white shot of her mother, Barbara, taken on her sister Jennifer’s wedding day, eight years earlier. Mum looked desperately glamorous, with her salon-fresh hair and artfully artless outfit. No mother-of-the-bride peach suit with matching hat for her. Lisa remembered the hat – three feet wide, floppy brimmed espresso coloured straw. No one sitting in the four pews behind her saw a thing of the ceremony. You couldn’t see why, and she no longer remembered, but Mum was laughing her big, loud laugh. Her head was thrown back, the ungainly hat long abandoned, the auburn waves of her hair blown messily across her face by the summer breeze. Her large, expressive mouth was open and wide, so that you could see a filling on the top row of her teeth, and her hazel eyes had almost disappeared into the crinkles of her face. It was an especially great picture of her mother, although Barbara had always been photogenic. Lisa could almost hear it when she looked at the picture, deep and throaty, and so, so alive. It was Mum’s raucous laugh she would miss the most – that, and the smell of...
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