Medium – Book/Audiobook (I couldn’t get through this book as a paper book, so I bought it as an audiobook instead)
About the Book – Dawn French, the famous actress, comedian and half of the duo ‘French and Saunders’, tells her life story through the writing of a series of letters to important people in her life – her family, friends and even childhood crushes. The letters chart her early life, her schooldays, her early romances, the premature death of her father through suicide, her rise to fame, her marriage to Lenny Henry and adoption of her little girl, Billie, and in the latter letters, her farewell to ‘The Vicar of Dibley’ and her double act with Jennifer Saunders.
My Rating – 3/5
My Thoughts – I started reading this book as a paperback book, but found it really hard to get through. No idea why – I just found the writing style quite difficult. The audiobook was much better and read by Liza Tarbuck, who has a voice very similar to Dawn French’s. In fact, at the beginning of the audio, Dawn appears for a few minutes and explains why she is not narrating herself – mostly because of the rather harrowing nature of some of the things that have happened to her. I listened to Jennifer Saunders’ book earlier in the year, so wanted to also have a go with Dawn’s, as the two of them are some of my favourite female comedians.
The book is tinged with sadness throughout – because of the death of Dawn’s father, but also because a good chunk of it is a love letter to her then-husband Lenny Henry. Unfortunately, they divorced two years after the release of this book, which makes some of the things she says quite sad, really. Dawn comes across as a really lovely person, and there are definite areas of humour in the book, as kooky and surreal as would be expected from half of French and Saunders. However, it was a book that I didn’t love. I enjoyed Jennifer Saunders’ book much more and I can’t quite put my finger on why. All I do know is that I felt unmotivated and a bit depressed when reading/listening to it – and I can’t tell if that’s the Covid blues, or the subject matter.
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