Things my mother never told me

• Main Author: Morrison, Blake
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: Vintage 2003
• Subjects: Morrison; O'Shea; Iceland
• Online Access: https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/1118/; https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/1118/1/73.jpeg

One of the many things his mother never quite told Blake was that before becoming Kim Morrison she had been Agnes O'Shea, one of a large family from County Kerry. There were other secrets too, and this is his search to uncover the truth about her – to trace how the girl who qualified as a doctor in Dublin and worked in English hospitals during the Second World War became a conventional Fifties wife and mother (though never quite as conventional as she seemed). At the heart of the book is a passionate wartime love affair seen through the frank, funny, furious letters Blake’s parents wrote during their courtship. There’s also the contrast between Kim’s life on busy labour wards and her fiance’s cushy exile in Iceland and the Azores. The closing chapters bring us up to the present – and Kim’s last hours.