Blog Tour Review: The Family Holiday by Elizabeth Noble

It is a pleasure to be taking my turn on the blog tour today for Elizabeth Noble’s latest novel The Family Holiday published on 25th June and destined to be one of the most popular summer releases.

The novel centres around Charlie; approaching his 80th Birthday, he feels the need to pull his family close to him. In a generous and unexpected gesture he hires a beautiful renovated farmhouse for 10 days and asks all his children to join him.

Charlie is a widower, still very much grieving his wife who passed away several years before. Without the glue of it’s matriarch, the family of three adult children has drifted further apart. Scott the eldest is finally married, to a driven and beautiful American with two teenage girls. After yesterday of living the wealthy bachelor life style he now finds himself with a ready made family.

Nick is struggling. Recently and tragically widowed he is trying to bring up three young children single handedly. Convinced that asking for help means he will have failed Carrie, his adored late wife, he is running on empty,

And finally Laura, the only daughter, who is also at a low point in her life. Her husband, Alex, has left for a younger woman and her teenage son Ethan’s first love affair had gone spectacularly wrong, with potentially serious consequences.

It is under these varied and somewhat strained circumstances that this multigenerational familial group comes together, trying to put on a united front for their father’s sake. And it isn’t long before the challenges and differences come to the fore. Take for instance the relationship between the resident sister- in – laws. With Laura feeling inadequate and low, the breezy, super organised, even Instagramming Heather was never going to be easy to take. Add to this the fact that the ever single Scott is now the only sibling with a settled family, throwing establish family dynamics into chaos, and there is a lot of unspoken tension bubbling under the surface.

Their time in the house is filled with incidents, conversations and memories. Some pulling the group further together, some pushing them further apart, all observed by Charlie, wistfully wishing that the Captain that held his family together, his beloved wife Daphne, was still there to steer the ship through this troubled time.

This is a story propelled by any number and scale of domestic dramas. I am very aware that such a description makes this novel sound light, maybe even frivolous, but nothing could be further from the truth. Because in truth the world often hinges on domestic drama. It is within our families, with all their challenges, ups and downs, that we learn to form close bonds, it can be our bedrock and sometimes our undoing . It is our first window on the world.

This is a novel about a family learning to come together again. About those that love each other learning to fill the holes that have appeared over time and to re-evaluate the bonds within a family, both extended and nuclear .It is about learning to welcome the new and let go of the old, learning to live with what is lost and come to terms with what remains.

Reading this after the extended lockdown of recent months, that enforced period of absence from those we love and cherish, this book made me ache for those time with friends and family. And turned my thoughts to happier times.

Rachel x