One Hundred Names

She was nicknamed The Graveyard. Any secret, any piece of confidential information, personal or otherwise, that went in never, ever came back out. You knew you were safe; you knew you would never be judged or, if you were it would be silently, so you'd never know. She was perfectly named with a birth name that meant consistency and fortitude, and she was appropriately nicknamed; she was solid, permanent and steady, stoic but oddly comforting.


There are more people involved in telling a story than the writer, and you know that.


‘You look far away.'
‘I was thinking.'
‘I shall alert the authorities at once.'”


“...but sometimes when people are involved, business has to stop being business and the human must win.”


But I was never the brave one. Why it should fall upon me to become that now is beyond me.


‘It's very simple. If you were to randomly select one hundred people from a phone directory, you would not only find a story, you would find one hundred stories, because everybody, every single person, has a story to tell. Every single ordinary person has an extraordinary story. We might all think that we are unremarkable, that our lives are boring, just because we aren't doing ground-breaking things or making headlines or winning awards. But the truth is we all do something that is fascinating, that is brave, that is something we should be proud of. Every day people do things that are not celebrated. That is what we should be writing about. The unsung heroes, the people that don't believe they are heroes at all because they are just doing what they believe they have to do in their lives.'


‘Everybody has a story to tell,' she said. ‘That is what links us all...'

Cecelia Ahern has always been a bit of a hit or miss author in my view, never quite achieving the heady success of her stand out P.S I Love You. With ‘One Hundred Names' though she may have captured the joy of her earliest work.

Kitty is a journalist who after wrongly accusing a teacher of abuse finds herself jobless and a figure for hate and scorn. She has lost her way personally & professionally and to make it worse her mentor Constance has died of cancer. As a tribute to her friend she agrees to write the one story her friend always wished she'd published. All she has is a list of 100 random names with no apparent connection.

Kitty's journey is not just about the story but one of self discovery and it contains lots of lovely sub plots which intertwine beautifully and whilst seeming to have nothing in common lead us to a very satisfying conclusion. I found it uplifting, a real boost post-christmas and a joy to read. Ahern writes her main character so well the change in her throughout the novel is subtle moving her from being dissatisfied with herself to rediscovering the joy of journalism through the people she meets and the stories they tell. A journey I wouldn't have missed for he world