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Patience

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Patience

By: Victoria Scott
Narrated by: Imogen Comrie, Bronwen Price
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About this listen

If you were offered a chance to cure your child's disease, would you take it?

The Willows have been through a lot. Louise has devoted her life to caring for her disabled youngest daughter. Pete works abroad, almost never seeing his loved ones. Their eldest, Eliza, is burdened by all the secrets she's trying to keep from her overloaded family.

Meanwhile, Patience observes the world while trapped in her own body. She laughs; she cries; she has opinions and knows what she wants. But those who love her most - and make every decision about her life - will never know.

Or will they? When the Willows are offered the opportunity for Patience to take part in a new gene therapy trial to cure her Rett syndrome, they face an impossible dilemma. Are the very real risks worth the chance of the reward, no matter how small?

©2021 Victoria Scott (P)2021 W F Howes Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Women's Fiction

Critic reviews

"An extraordinary novel about love and hope and family and what happens in the space between the words. I adored it." (Kirsten Hesketh, author of Another Us)
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The story is so intriguing and so well written, that I couldn't stop reading (listening) until I finished it.

Amazing book!

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This book is an excellent read leaving you wondering which way the plot will go at multiple points throughout the story. It is written in the voices of two parents and their two adult daughters, one of whom has Rhett syndrome so does not speak or have a functional means of communication. The author has a sister who has Rhett syndrome who she shared a room with during her childhood and who she was very close to growing up and continues to be close to and so she has used her experiences of having conversations and spending time with her sister as well as speaking to other people with Rhett Syndrome and their families to try to make the character’s fictional inner monologue as close to what she imagines it might be like as possible. It will always be fictional as unless we find a means of reversing Rhett Syndrome, we cannot know exactly what people with the condition are thinking or on what level they are able to function, but Victoria Scott does a very sensitive job here to produce a fully rounded character who is very much a personality in her own right and has the same weighting as the other three narrators as you read through the book.

A really great read, not too taxing but covering lots of hard hitting issues faced by carers, families of children with disabilities, how it can damage relationships, impact other siblings, clinical trials, etc it’s all in there.

A very good read and definitely one that deserves a place in a disability section of a bookshop even though the author isn’t disabled herself.

Spot on disabled characterisation from genuine experience and research

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loved every minute of it, didn't want it to end. As a mum of a disabled son I was in tears in some parts its so relatable. Brilliant book

so well put together

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I found this to be a lovely story but was pulled out into to many chapters it became tedious at times but hat a lovely end.

Four stars

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I found this book very moving. There were many parts that I could relate to as a parent of a Rett syndrome daughter in her 30’s. I thought the story line was good and especially liked the way we heard how Patience thought. This could only have been written by a sibling.

A very good and touching read

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