And For You, Everything Matters

An obscure narrator ‘writes a picture’ for an audience of one. By glancing into the lives of a particular family, a question is asked about what it means to live well in an ordinary world that is dark but equally full of wonder. And For You, Everything Matters is a story about a young woman, Jane, in psychological crisis; it is a portrait of a marriage that is loving, witty, and philosophically restless; and it is an extended meditation on how we think about mental suffering, grief, human connection, the natural world, hope, light.

Located in the home of the English novel of manners, this is a poetical hymn to family life with much tea-drinking and occasional scenes of risqué humour. The therapy sessions with hapless Dr Bridges were comedic and Noble’s sparkling language and meandering sentences had me laughing out loud; ‘why don’t we insist on things being beautiful?’ asks his patient and the ferocity of sacred winds ensues in a garden that desperately wants to be Eden regained.

I read the novel in one sitting carried along by the author’s poetic metonymic style as he turns his gentle humour on the complexities of domestic life. A real treat!