Reviewed by Kathy Weissman on January 24, 2011. The Hand That First Held Mine. When the sophisticated Innes Kent turns up on her doorstep, Lexie Sinclair realises she cannot wait any longer for her life to begin, and leaves for London. ISBN-13: 9780547423180 Summary Lexie Sinclair cannot stay. Enclosed within her parents’ genteel country lawn, she yearns for more. Winner of the 2010 Costa Novel Award and a Sunday Times bestseller, THE HAND THAT FIRST HELD MINE by Maggie O'Farrell is a gorgeously written story of love and motherhood from the author of HAMNET and I AM, I AM, I AM. The Hand That First Held Mine is Maggie O’Farrell’s fifth novel. Hedged in by her parents' genteel country life, she plans her escape to London. I couldn’t stop thinking about it long after I read the final page." —Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street "Maggie O’Farrell is an uncommonly perceptive writer, and The Hand That First Held Mine is an unforgettable story of family, ambition, and love. The Hand That First Held Mine is a spellbinding novel of two women connected across fifty years by art, love, betrayals, secrets, and motherhood. The Hand that First Held Mine is a novel written by Maggie O'Farrell, about the spirited journey of Lexie Sinclair, a bright, tempestuous woman who finds her way from rural Devon to the centre of postwar London's burgeoning art scene.Soon, she falls deeply in love. In The Hand that First Held Mine, she returns to the domestic sphere of her earlier novels, but with a meatier, more complex agenda. She makes her way to the city, and meets a magazine editor, Innes, a man unlike any she has ever imagined. ISBN-13: 9780547423180 Summary Lexie Sinclair cannot stay. 4.0 • 16 Ratings; $9.99; $9.99; Publisher Description. And yet, in THE HAND THAT FIRST HELD MINE, love also becomes a way to rediscover a lost past, transcend your limits, or transform your life. Lexie Sinclair is plotting an extraordinary life for herself. The Hand That First Held Mine Maggie O'Farrell, 2010 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 368 pp. The Hand That First Held Mine is a dazzling and absorbing novel." The focus has … Enclosed within her parents’ genteel country lawn, she yearns for more. Like her acclaimed The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox , it is a "breathtaking, heart-breaking creation. She is an independent woman who works as an arts and news writer when woman mostly didn't, and … Reading The Hand That First Held Mine, it is abundantly clear that author Maggie O’Farrell has this rare skill. Publication Date: January 26, 2011; Genres: Fiction; The Hand That First Held Mine Maggie O'Farrell, 2010 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 368 pp. The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell. O’Farrell’s fifth novel follows the style of the increasingly popular dual-narrative, in which readers are introduced to two remarkable women in alternating chapters. 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