‘The Stolen Child’ by Carmel Harrington

Published by Headline,
27 February 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-03542550-1 (HB)

I know that novels about a child going missing are not everyone’s cup of tea. But for me, who’s never been a parent, I very much enjoy such stories as I can thrill to the heightened emotion they bring without the taint of personal fear. So, I was looking forward to reading The Stolen Child by international big hitter Carmel Harrington, and I was not disappointed.

The structure, following three different women in three different time periods, arouses curiosity as while one is clearly the daughter of the other, the third, from an earlier time, has no clear relation and seems rather the outlier. Yet her story, a child of five being given up to a London orphanage in 1963, is just as fascinating as that of Lily, a therapist in her forties practising in Dublin in 2023 with a divorced, damaged mum and dad but also a supportive husband and young son of her own. There’s no mystery about why Kimberly and Jason are damaged: Kimberly’s story is the first one we’re shown as her little boy goes missing on a cruise ship off Barcelona in 1983.

Kimberly’s heartrending story is followed through in a series of snippets showing the horror of discovering her little boy Robert has gone missing overnight from their cabin, a horror that only increases as he isn’t discovered, and she and her husband and baby girl are forced to come to terms with the fact Robert’s disappearance seems permanent. Someone has taken him. It drives Kimberly and Jason apart and makes a burden for Lily; the child who never went away but nevertheless sacrificed her right to attention.

I found the episodic way the story was told made the book hard to put down as gradually I got a bigger picture of each of the women and their challenges. I shared Lily’s excitement when an American client called Zach tells her he’s seen the latest of her father’s TV interviews and is sure he’s Robert. From there, the story as Lily and Zach investigate his past widens out and becomes more enthralling than ever, embracing London gangs, a Spanish convent and an abusive husband. The twist I didn’t see coming. It was clever and utterly convincing and not what I was thinking of at all, no doubt just as the author intended. All power to her.

I enjoyed the depictions of life in 1970s Battersea slums and particularly the examination of the different ways people, in particular women, deal with the unfairness of life and find the strength to shape circumstances. The importance of family relationships is of course a major theme, but the novel also asks disturbing questions about the justifications for behaviour which were a driving force both for the way the story played out and for reader involvement.

The prose was straightforward and accessible, the evocation of setting a strength and the story an absolute page-turner, with an engaging cast of characters. Hugely enjoyable.
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Reviewer: Dea Parkin

Carmel Harrington lives with her husband Roger and two beautiful children Amelia and Nate, in Ireland. Their lives are full of stories, songs, hide and seek, Mickey Mouse, walks on the beach, tickles, kisses, chocolate treats and most of all abundant love. To make life even more perfect, she has now fulfilled a lifetime ambition to be a writer and a published author with HarperImpulse, a division of Harper Collins Publishers and a playwright. She believes in Happily Ever Afters, because that’s what happened to her. 

Dea Parkin is an editor with her consultancy Fiction Feedback and is also Secretary of the Crime Writers’ Association. She writes poetry and occasionally re-engages with The Novel. When she isn't editing, managing or writing she is usually to be found on the tennis court – or following the international tour at home on TV. Usually with several books on the go, she entertains a penchant for crime fiction, history, and novels with a mystical edge. She is engaged in a continual struggle to find space for bookshelves and time for her friends and her cat.