Summary
Melody Browne is a thirty-three-year-old woman who lives in London with her teenage son Ed. When she was nine years old her house burned down, and since that day she didn’t remember anything before her ninth birthday. But when she goes on a date to a hypnotist show with a men called Ben, she starts to remember things of her childhood. Day by day she begins to piece together the story of her childhood. She always thought that Gloria and Clive Browne were her parents, and that she lived an extremely normal life, but her memories tells her another story:
Her mother was called Jane Newsome and her father was John Ribblesdale. They divorced after their second baby, Romany, died after two days. Melody continued to live with her mother, and her father went to live with a women called Jacqui and her daughter Charlotte in LA. When Melody was five she and her mother eventually came to live in a squat with a man called Ken and many other people. In the holidays, Melody went to her dad en her stepmother, who got a little sister for Melody, called Emily. Melody loved Emily and her mother wasn’t happy with that at all. She became pregnant with Ken, but, for the second time in her life, the baby died immediately after it was born. Melody’s mum stole a baby, and pretended it to be hers. She was arrested by the police and came into prison. Melody’s father would come and look after her, but on his way to Broadstairs, where Melody and her mum had lived for two years, he got an accident and died a few days before Melody’s seventh birthday. Before Melody was adopted by Gloria and Clive Browne, she had lived a few weeks with her auntie Susie, who wasn’t happy with the fact that she was adopted by two strangers, but she couldn’t do anything about it. Her life with Gloria and Clive was stable, until the moment she heard that her mother had killed herself. Melody didn’t say anything for weeks, because she didn’t want to live with Clive and Gloria any more. But after the fire, it looks like she was forgotten everything and called Clive and Gloria mum and dad, and because her ‘parents’ didn’t want to ruin her life again they have never told her the real story about her childhood.
Melody was looking for her lost acquaintances from the past, and only after she had met, inter alia, Emily and Ken she felt like her life was complete.
Detailed Analysis
The book is called ‘The truth about Melody Browne’ because Melody Ribblesdale has always thought that her name was Melody Browne, but after she’d discovered her childhood, she also discovered that her name was not Melody Browne, but Melody Ribblesdale.
The main character is (of course) Melody Ribblesdale. The half of the story is about Melody’s childhood between 1976 and 1981, where Jane Newsome, John Ribblesdale, Ken Stone, Susan Newsome (auntie Susie), Emily Sonningfeld, Gloria Browne and Clive Browne are the main characters, but in the present Edward Browne and Ben Diamond are the main characters. Melody has lived in Canterbury, in Fitzrovia, in Broadstairs, a few times in Los Angeles for a week or so, but most of the time the story is told in London.
Personal Response
The story could have happened, but that is not very reasonable. There are so many things happened in Melody’s childhood that it’s a little bit unreal. It’s very exceptional that your mother dies, that your father dies and that you can’t remember that after a fire, but when a hypnotist clicks his fingers you get flash-backs and remember it again.
I really liked reading the book. It is written very good and realistic. After I realized that the parts in the past were memories, I want to read more chapters, and I want to know how the story would end. The book is also funny to read, because the parts that Melody is five, she don’t understand some things and as reader you know what she’s talking about, and that’s just funny. -Flyer on the next page.-
Reading Experience
The book is very well described at the sad parts. Then you can really identify with Melody because you go into her head, and imagine her thoughts. Also the settings are well described. You ARE at the place where Melody is, and that makes the book very readable.
Unfortunately there is no film made about this book, but if there was, I think it would be a nice film.
REACTIES
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