Jane Hawking, divorced wife of Professor Stephen Hawking and mother of his three children has written a memoir which relates the story of a marriage begun in optimism, despite facing the terrible odds of motor neurone disease, and of its gradual decline which became inescapably apparent as Hawking's academic career and renown began to soar. Jane Hawking writes of her marriage and remembers the vigorous young man with whom she fell in love prior to the onset of his debilitating motor neurone disease. Moreover, she tells of the difficulties of looking after a wheelchair-bound husband and three small children - all demanding attention 24 hours a day. These experiences, coupled with the author's evident inner-strength can offer inspiration to others faced with a similar family situation. The collapse of the high profile Hawking marriage, provoked by Stephen's affair with a nurse, is related in honest detail and Jane's recent re-marriage to an old family friend offers the hope of happy ending to a life of struggle and alienation.
He is one of the foremost physicists of the 20th century whose
A Brief History of Time, first published in 1988, catapulted the Cambridge scientist to international fame. She was his wife whose first meetings with the boy with "the floppy hair" and subsequent marriage to him overwhelmed Jane Hawking's life. As she writes in her memoir
Music to Move The Stars: "The story of our relationship would be unremarkable... but for the complications of genius and terrible illness". Almost from the beginning of their married life the Hawkings had to cope with the swift onset of Stephen's motor-neurone disease with its wasting paralysis of body and speech but not of his mind. At the same time his academic career was flourishing, culminating after more than 20 years in the monumental success of his bestselling book. In this lengthy and eloquent account that is as much a biography of her now ex-husband as it is a recollection of her own life Jane Hawking describes the difficulties--both public and private--of supporting a partner who needed 24-hour nursing care while also bringing up their three children. She writes poignantly of "the callous face of a society often both uncaring and uncomprehending", the suppression of her own academic pursuits, the close association she formed with family friend Jonathan Jones (now her husband), the breakdown of the Hawkings' marriage after Stephen left her for his nurse and the devastation she felt after her unusual but incredible partnership with him came to an end.
Music to Move the Stars is not just a forthright analysis of one of the greatest minds of the 20th century but also a probing account of a marriage dealing with more than its fair share of complexities and constraints and the effects of unexpected fame on the life of one not-so-ordinary family. --Catherine Taylor
