Melodies & Memories

The Songs That Find Us by Andrea Darby is a beautiful contemporary novel that I never wanted to end.

The novel follows a family through an early dementia diagnosis. We ‘hear’ the action in the first person alternating between Dad Ed, Mum Lizzie and daughter Beck. Each one copes in different ways as the past catches up with the present.

There is power in music. “Music’s amazing… How it drops you right into a memory.” Music makes the years fall away, dropping us into a moment in time. Music helps people with brain injuries or impairments. Sufferers benefit from singing as we witness in the Melodies & Memories café sessions. Music lifts people beyond themselves. This resonates with me as my beautiful and dearly departed, Dad suffered a head trauma earlier this year. He could hardly string a sentence together but lay in his hospital bed singing, and with his fingers tapping out the melody on the table as if it were a keyboard.

Everyone in the family is struggling with something. Beck, as an adopted daughter wonders about finding her birth mum. She struggles with her father’s diagnosis. “What if one day I see Dad, like I have a million times before, and someone I don’t know looks back at me?” No one wants their dad to change. Beck is also dissatisfied with her life. She wants new ventures.