Eliza Cummings is a woman of forty-one, whose life has been racked by guilt due to an incident that happened when she was sixteen and which culminated in the death of her best friend, Rose. Out of the blue her godfather, who as Rose’s father has for years shunned Eliza, decides he wants to amend the rift and asks her to visit him in Sweden.
What follows is a book about forgiveness and grief and the way the sins of the past can weigh down the present and even blight the future. This may sound bleak, but Cobbald infuses her story with plenty of black humour. Eliza is a wonderful creation. Working as a ceramics restorer, she is quirkily artistic. With her move to a new house, she has amusing encounters with her new neighbours who somehow draw her out of herself.
While much of the novel is about Eliza’s life in the present, it also revisits the accident of twenty-five years ago with unsettling revelations that keep the reader guessing until the end. Drowning Rose is a charming read that is a mixture of chic lit., comedy and mystery story with a look at some serious issues along the way.
Reviewed by Paige Turner
Drowning Rose by Marika Cobbold, 2011
