Dying, is always for the first time.

When I was a teenager, I sometimes daydreamed that I am dying / dead. My friends and relatives would be so concerned, so caring....


'The First Time', written (quite some time back), by Joy Feilding, is a novel with similar musings. A married woman, in her late thirties, is struck by an incurable disease just as her marriage is breaking up. The doctors give her an year to live.

Death as a threat, transforms everything. An unfaithful husband comes back home, an uncaring mother is forced to understand and accept her daughter. The couple, during the last few months of their time together, fall in love, for the first time.

I think novels are written for people who once had enormous capacity to daydream. Now all they have left is a little imagination. Fiction writing, as such is nothing but professional daydreaming.

If you are a person who harbors the desire that people around you should love you more than they do, 'The First Time' is an ideal weekend read.

Joy Feilding has done it again. If this book gets you, you wont be able to put it down.