Nell (Paperback)

Nell is a fictional story told through Nell's diary as a teenager and later as an adult. Keeping a diary was her way of expressing herself. She tells of how it used to be of growing up as a child in a large family, and how having an illness can severely hinder that development. When she married she stopped writing. It was at this time she realized she had became a no one. So it is that Nell's life is thrown into complete turmoil, with her daughter's sudden illness and the abrupt end of her marriage, the death of her father. And finally a diagnosis of a mental illness that very nearly destroyed her. Nell takes up writing again and through successive sessions with her psychologist is able to recount how it was for her. She must account for the past and present, for her demons and the future. It is supported in part by split narrative with Nell's father Patrick, her half sister Lilly from the church and later at the wake as she reveals what everyone wants to know, did her father Patrick have a will. Struggling through her illness she must choose to follow a new path, in making a new life for herself, or does she?