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A Novel
by Joanna Trollope
Book Reviewed by:Trollope explores the complexities of twenty-first century family life.
Ben is, at last, leaving home. At twenty-two, he’s the youngest of the family. His mother Edie, an actress, is distraught. His father Russell, a theatrical agent, is rather hoping to get his wife back, after decades of family life. His brother, Matthew, is wrestling with a relationship in which he achieves and earns less than his girlfriend. His sister Rosa is wrestling with debt, and the end of a turbulent love affair.
Meet the Boyd family and the empty nest, twenty-first-century style.
The ebb and flow of relationships is brilliantly handled by Trollope. This is a much more metropolitan crowd than her normal characters - no timid country wives here .... Trollope has perfectly captured what it takes to be a mother...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Joanna Trollope was born in her grandfather, Anthony Trollope's rectory in
the Cotswolds in December 1943, and although her actual childhood was spent in
the Midlands and in Surrey, she always felt that her real "home" was her
birthplace. Joanna says — “It gave me - still gives me - not just a sense of
rootedness, but a capacity to value landscape and weather and the rich life of
smallish communities. It wouldn't matter where I lived now, I'd always carry
that centred feeling of having come from somewhere very well defined with me.”
She is the eldest of three, the mother of two daughters, the stepmother of two
stepsons, and a grandmother.
After winning a tiny scholarship to Oxford, she went on to a spell ...
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