I'm a big fan of Dawn French and have read a few of her previous books, so I expected this book to be as good as the rest, how wrong I was ! But then we find out that the end of the marriage was precipitated because Silvia helped Cat dispose of her dead husband’s body, which happened three years ago, so Cassie can’t have been kicked out over four years ago.

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.

Throughout her time in hospital, she is visited by family, her best friend, her ex-husband, her nurse, and her cleaner.

I got on with it much better than I normally would a book where I don't really identify with, or like, the characters appearing early on, but a lot of them were very cariacatured (Tia especially), which grated for a while. All of the visitors, with the exception of her nurse who never knew her and her housekeeper, Silvia seems universally disliked. The writing grew increasingly powerful as the story developed, and the ending was much more moving, and much darker, than I had anticipated. I did not, however, think that the book was 'side-splitting' or 'hilarious', which were terms used on the front cover to describe the book. For example, when Jo tries animal therapy on Silvia, including a stick bug who "alien-like" clamps onto her face and "does a little clinging-on bouncy dance instead.Some of the characters are hilarious, Tia is her cleaning, proud and very funny in some of her chat and outlook on matters. I love the idea behind this book - The whole book takes place in Coma Suite 5, where Silvia, a friend, lover and mother lies in a coma. Though there are quite a few narrators, they were all very distinctive and even if it didn't have their names at the beginning of each chapter, you'd know who they were. 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.

For every heartfelt or memorable moment, there is another monologue about trees, an oh-my-god-who-cares backstory, and let's not forget the damnable Jamaican lilt which seems to become more pronounced with every passing conversation. It's a story about loss, and saying goodbye, but it's also a story about finding the truth and finding love. Each character comes along to visit Silvia, for various different reasons, and through the things they have to say we learn about them as well as about Silvia.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. Ed doesn't like sister Jo either and that just makes the whole bed-watching a chore and very painful. So, I approached her new novel with a little trepidation, unsure as to whether she deserved a second chance. Cassie was living at home when she discovered she was pregnant and then a week after telling her mother, she is evicted from the house.

Her children hate her and haven't seen her in years, her husband is wounded and bitter at the abrupt end to their marriage, and her sister is too loony to really know who her sister was.

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. I wished for a little less use of dialect in the nurse looking after Silvia, though I have to admit the housekeepers malapropisms (due to her sons teaching her the wrong words in English) were hilarious. Ed has much mixed feelings for his ex wife, the things she has done and looking back on their relationship before she changed. I think this would make a better play than a novel (I was reminded of Simon Gray’s play “Life Support” which has a similar setting). It's hard to have any action, except in flashbacks, when the whole novel takes place in a hospital room.