The Confession

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The puzzle pieces were slowly awarded and hard-fought for, but as each found its place and the larger picture began to be revealed it also heightened the emotion and the humanity Burton was presenting, alongside the fascinating mystery. Jessie Burton always writes perceptively about female identity and creativity, but here she also explores motherhood in all its guises and nuances to stunning effect * Red * One of the main characters in the book, although not one of our narrators, is an author, known for her beautiful poetic and poignant prose… laden with depth and meaning, and Burton effortlessly manages to reflect this.

While for the most part I really appreciated Burton's prose, I soon grew wary of the odd way in which she would suddenly turn to saccharine language (for example in expressing the 'anguish' experienced by Rose and Elise). There were many sex scenes that were far too twee for my taste. And yet, amidst these corny love making scenes, there were these abrupt crude descriptions which seemed like a poorly veiled attempt to be ' modern' that succeeded only in irritating me: “her cunt a warm coal”....really? . Rose has always felt a void in her life, her mother abandoned her as a baby, and she feels a abiding need to know more about her, convinced it will make her feel more whole as a human being and contribute to a greater sense of her identity. She finds out from her father that Elise had links with Constance, a woman who had withdrawn from public life at the height of her fame and lived a reclusive existence since then. Rose embarks on a quest to discover more about her elusive mother as she inveigles her way into Constance's life under false pretenses, securing a position as her carer. She goes on to develop a lively and critically important relationship with Constance that is to form the basis of her life changing decisions as she learns to become more of who she is. There are echoes of the past in the present as the ghost of Elise hangs over and haunts Constance and Rose. I was drawn into this book straight away, the characters are very vivid and strong independent women, you want them to have a happy ending. This story encompasses the story of love, relationships, loss in a warm and compassionate way. The Confession by Jessie Burton will be published in Australia by Pan Macmillan and available from 24 September 2019.

The things I didn’t: the characters are not likeable at all and the bad choices they made really triggered me because Burton is THAT GOOD with creating characters, but also, I wasn’t rooting for any of them. Elise was boring, apart from her ‘good looks’, Connie was arrogant and soulless and Rose was the most aimless 30-something I’ve read in a long time - and not in a good way. I just didn’t care. Her best yet, I'm dazzled by it . . . I am deeply jealous of every reader who has it all ahead of them -- Daisy Buchanan, author of The Sisterhood The premise of The Confession is one that has been done time and again. A young-ish woman forms a bond with an older woman, the latter is often famous (she can be an actress like in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo or a writer such as in The Thirteenth Tale) or merely involved in some mystery of sorts ( The Brimstone Wedding). The older woman will often confide in the younger one, who in her turn will find herself re-assessing her often until then unfulfilling existence. These books often implement a dual timeline to tell both of these women's stories and towards the end a big secret will be revealed. So yes, I knew that this book was threading familiar paths...still, I hoped that it would give this scenario, or at least these dynamics, a new spin...(it didn't). Three decades later Rose Simmons is on a dogged hunt to unearth the secrets of her mother's disappearance, when she was a baby. Her close-lipped father has finally divulged some closely-guarded secrets and her search has dead-ended at Connie's front door. Past and present begin to collide as all that has been previously undisclosed is revealed, whether it is best for those still living that they do so, or not.

One day, her dad tells her that the last person to see her mother alive is the famous writer Constance Holden who was Elise's former lover. 30 years after her mother went missing, Rose under a false identity, goes to meet the old writer who now leads an extremely private life. While The Muse was a novel about the creative drive of painters, The Confession is a meditation on fiction and the compulsion to invent alternative realities. Not only does Constance spend much time theorising on the mechanics of her craft, her helpmeet “Laura Brown” is also an act of pure self-invention. From the outset the reader is made aware that “Laura” is really Rose Simmons, the baby abandoned by Elise, who has worked her way into Constance’s confidence in the hope of extracting information from the last person to have seen her mother alive. I did find the character of Rose comforting. She's the only thirty-something I've read about who's even more lost and directionless then I've ever felt in my lowest moments as a twenty-something. But she learns to find comfort and meaning in life without letting herself be debilitated by the pressures of society, which I found life-affirming. I took from her that it is ok to just 'be', and even when you feel like you're falling by the wayside you are still learning and growing more than you know. She made a big decision that I found refreshing and touching, with the feelings around it explained thoroughly and realistically. I love a broken cycle, because there's little more frustrating than the same mistakes being repeated both personally and intergenerationally.

Summary

I also hated the fact that Rose became pregnant. Her pregnancy existed only as a pretext for the narrative to finally present us with someone who decides not to have a child, for now. It felt like some horrible sort of test: she said she didn't want children but what will happen when she becomes pregnant? And not telling her ex-boyfriend is made to seem like some sort of feminist choice rather than a crappy move. Of course it's her choice, but couldn't she have at shared this choice with him? He did not strike me as the type who would try to change her mind or make her feel guilty or something. All of the women seemed framed by their potential to become mothers. Couldn't we have one woman who wasn't defined by her ability to procreate ?! The book unfolds from the point of view of Elise, who we meet in 1980 – supposedly meeting a man her flatmate’s set her up with on a blind date – but instead runs into Connie.

Spiegelman, Ian (29 August 2014). "Jessie Burton on the dollhouse that inspired her novel". USA Today . Retrieved 29 January 2015. Hi, I am an avid reader and have been all my life. I put it down to being an only child and having a teacher for a mum. The idea of this blog is to share my passion for reading and review new and upcoming books as well as those that may have been out for several years. The Confession by Jessie Burton is a dual narrative story about three women, Elise, Constance and Rose. Elise and Constance are lovers in the 1980s and in the present day, Rose seeks answers about her mother Elise, who left when she was a baby. Burton studied at Lady Margaret School, [4] Brasenose College, Oxford, and the Central School of Speech and Drama. [5] Två parallella berättelser vävs ihop. Elise är 20 år och har lite olika ströjobb och Connie är 36 år och författare, deras vägar korsas av en slump och de förälskar sig i varandra i början på 80-talet. Berättelsen om Rose som är i 30-årsåldern utspelar sig i nutid, 2017. Rose har aldrig slutat undra var hennes mamma tog vägen (och varför hon lämnade!) när hon spårlöst försvann på 80-talet och lämnade Rose tillsammans med hennes pappa när Rose var ett spädbarn.

Interestingly, this is the second book in a row I’ve read in which a character goes ‘undercover’ for not-necessarily-nefarious-reasons!) Burton's 2014 debut novel The Miniaturist is set in 17th-century Amsterdam. The novel is inspired by Petronella Oortman's dollhouse now at the Rijksmuseum, although it does not otherwise attempt to be a biographical novel. [8] The Miniaturist took over four years to write. It was the subject of a bidding war at the April 2013 London Book Fair. [9] It was adapted as a two-part miniseries for the BBC and PBS Masterpiece in 2017.

While Burton resists easy conclusions, calling out the perverse comfort that’s to be had from abandonment and the myriad other ways in which a lover’s hurt can justify shabby behaviour, she does have a weakness for treacly dialogue. “Oh, Rose,” Connie exhales towards the novel’s end, “I always wondered if this day might come.” Rose had spent her whole life wondering what had happened to her mother. The last person to have seen her mother was Constance Holden. The story is told through two timelines, 1980's Los Angeles and London 2018. The two stories weave seamlessly in and out of each other. We get descriptions of the places and the people. The main characters are strong and independent women. The story is well written with a steady pace. I did feel that the last chapter was a bit rushed. Did Rose find her mother? You will need to read this book to find out. Preston, Alex (5 July 2022). "The House of Fortune by Jessie Burton review – bold and thrilling sequel to The Miniaturist". The Guardian . Retrieved 18 August 2022. I found that many sentences in this book were beautifully crafted and some passages spoke to me deeply. There were also parts that felt a little 'preachy' however, and moments of dialogue especially that made me cringe. I have read a lot of pitch-perfect 'millennial fiction' recently, and I felt that Burton's modern day chapters didn't quite compare. I wanted to write about what it means to love someone at the cost of yourself. Whether it’s a good thing. Whether it’s the point of everything. p 171Elise, naïve, beautiful and somehow half-formed, is the sort of young woman on whom people project their deepest desires, often without even realising they are doing so. “Beauty had come to Elise; they told her it had. She never talked about it, or did anything about it… But there it was. Despite the scrutiny, she still felt invisible until Constance Holden looked at her on Hampstead Heath by the cinnamon trees.”