Description
‘Some people are beginning to measure out their lives in terms of the next Joanna Trollope…her novels, like family life itself, are built on the tensions between the illusions of permanence and the reality of charm’ Jennifer Selway, Observer
Lizzie and Frances were twins. They had all the conspiratorial closeness of twins, together forming part of a unit, a joint wholeness – or at least that was the way Lizzie saw it. Lizzie was the one who had everything, husband, children, a flourishing business, and the most beautiful house in Langworth. Frances had a solitary life in London, running her own small travel firm, and progressing through a sequence of unsatisfactory men. Lizzie felt sorry for Frances and worried about her, but still she thought that everything was – vaguely – all right as long as Frances could share in her complete and satisfying life.
Then Frances, suddenly and surprisingly, announced she wasn’t coming home to Lizzie for Christmas. She was going away, to Spain. Lizzie’s world began to tilt. She had always known that Frances kept a small part of herself separate but her Christmas defection seemed overwhelmingly threatening to their unity.
As Frances’s future promised to change into something exciting an unexpected, so Lizzie’s began to deteriorate as Britain’s economic crises ate into her ideal lifestyle. Now it seemed that Frances could be the twin to have everything.
‘I love her wit, her benevolence, her resolve that in even the darkest hour a little light will shine’ Vincent Banville, Irish Sunday Press
‘Wise and warm, profoundly satisfying as well as acutely querying…a perceptive chronicler of our times’ Clare Colvin, Sunday Express
Soft cover, 380 pages. In good preloved condition with the exception of some yellowing to pages.
