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Rating: 
Summary: Her final book.
Review: After an illustrious career that spans half a century Cookson thought she was finished. With failing health and too weak to write or type she dictated, what to her was a story that must be told. As she approached the project, she reminisces in the dedication, that she had the story in her head from start to finish, and it was actually a warranted way to take her mind off of her miseries and impending death. The story begins with the astonishing arrival of a woman who has been missing for well over two decades. From this moment on we are led down a path of injustice and redemption. The characters are so real you can feel their hearts beating from the pages of the book. Adverse as their lives are they find joy in each other and the simple moments of the day. I will miss this author, it is good to know that her works will live on for years to come. Kelsana 3/23/02
Rating: 
Summary: fun early-mid twentieth century British relationship tale
Review: In 1955 London, a woman in tattered clothing arrives at the law firm of Alexander Armstrong & Son. The receptionist starts to toss the vagrant out, but hesitates when the woman mentions Mr. Armstrong by name and says she is Mrs. Baindor. The receptionist still has doubts, but informs a higher up who informs Alexander. Upon hearing the name, a stunned Alexander races out of his office to see the disheveled woman. He arranges for Mrs. Baindor to enter his sister's nursing home.
Over twenty-six years ago, Irene Baindor vanished after a particularly nasty argument with her abusive spouse. Alexander has been looking for her ever since with no success until she arrived at his office wearing the same garb she wore over a quarter of a century ago. She holds a package in a death grip refusing to let it go, but his willing to cooperate on everything else as long as Alexander gets her son to visit her. Still, he wonders, as he has since she vanished, where she has been all this time?
THE SILENT LADY is an exciting mystery that works quite well when readers glimpse the enigmatic Irene's abstruse past. However, the action bogs down when others pontificate with endless soliloquies. Irene is the key character whose past makes the story line hum when it centers on her, but when someone else like Alexander takes the stage, the plot loses momentum. Though she died in 1998, Catherine Cookson is still cooking those engaging early to mid twentieth century British relationship dramas that have made her a household name. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: fun early-mid twentieth century British relationship tale
Review: In 1955 London, a woman in tattered clothing arrives at the law firm of Alexander Armstrong & Son. The receptionist starts to toss the vagrant out, but hesitates when the woman mentions Mr. Armstrong by name and says she is Mrs. Baindor. The receptionist still has doubts, but informs a higher up who informs Alexander. Upon hearing the name, a stunned Alexander races out of his office to see the disheveled woman. He arranges for Mrs. Baindor to enter his sister's nursing home.
Over twenty-six years ago, Irene Baindor vanished after a particularly nasty argument with her abusive spouse. Alexander has been looking for her ever since with no success until she arrived at his office wearing the same garb she wore over a quarter of a century ago. She holds a package in a death grip refusing to let it go, but his willing to cooperate on everything else as long as Alexander gets her son to visit her. Still, he wonders, as he has since she vanished, where she has been all this time?
THE SILENT LADY is an exciting mystery that works quite well when readers glimpse the enigmatic Irene's abstruse past. However, the action bogs down when others pontificate with endless soliloquies. Irene is the key character whose past makes the story line hum when it centers on her, but when someone else like Alexander takes the stage, the plot loses momentum. Though she died in 1998, Catherine Cookson is still cooking those engaging early to mid twentieth century British relationship dramas that have made her a household name. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Irene's Sad, Silent Life Finally Revealed
Review: Set in London in the early twentieth century, as are many of Catherine Cookson's novels, this book tells the story of Irene Baindor, once a beautiful woman of high class and musical talent, who was mysteriously ejected from her home with the rich, powerful and dangerous Richard Baindor. The book begins with Irene showing up at the Armstrong law offices in a tattered coat and hat, looking like a street person, having disappeared many years ago and presumed to be dead. The book then back-tracks to uncover her past with Bella and their ragtag band of lads. Bella is a kind hearted but poor woman who helps out those worse off than she is by providing food and lodging for a pittance. She'll take in any decent person as long as they aren't violent or alcoholic. A mysterious, timid waif of a woman shows up in her yard looking like she had been homeless for a while. She is frightened, particularly of strange men, and almost mute, and Bella takes her in. She calls herself Reenee, but seems to have few memories or her past, and is often scared into a semi catatonic state. She proves to be a hard worker and becomes very dedicated to Bella and her lads and they gradually form a family of sorts. The years go by and the mystery of Reenee's past is never solved, until one day the name of Dr. Baindor is mentioned in her presence. She decides to visit the doctor, who turns out to be the son she hasn't seen since he was 4. As her memory gradually returns, and she is reunited with her son, the sad and awful truth of her destructive years with Richard is revealed. Bella is a loveable well-developed character, and the dichotomy of the richest and poorest classes is evident in this book as in other Cookson novels; however not enough of the inner thoughts and motivations of the main character, Reenee (the Silent Lady), are revealed until too late in the book to allow the reader to truly develop any empathy or understanding of her plight.
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