 |
- Romance - |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Marrying the Mistress |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Marrying the Mistress byJoanna Trollope Bloomsbury 311 pages, 2000 ISBN 0747547270 Reviewed by our South African Editor, Merilyn Tomkins adams.west@saol.com - Adams Bookshop, Durban, SA Read our interview with the author Simon Stockdale spells it out for his son Jack: "Your grandfather is proposing to leave your grandmother to whom he has been married for forty years, and marry a woman with whom he has been having an affair for seven years." "Grando?" marvels Jack. "Grando wants out and wants to start again?" What can this announcement mean to a boy in the throes of his first love affair? Or to Simon's wife Carrie, who always thought her wronged mother-in-law was one of the most self-pitying women she'd ever met anyway? Filial debts are about to be called in and Carrie doesn't want her husband Simon to pay them. Carrie manipulates Simon into representing her as her attorney. Simon feels a bond of obligation towards his mother which makes him vulnerable - and which no one else can fathom. What of the mistress - a barrister who has fallen in love with a judge twice her age? What if she isn't just "His Honour's totty", as one court official labels her. What if, as Simon's gay brother Alan decides, "She's the real thing. She's a proper person." Simon and Carrie's daughter intervene in a very sticky situation, and there is a surprising twist in the tale in the last chapter. Joanna Trollope braves another emotional minefield with breathtaking ability in her irresistible new novel. She throws light into the recognisable but shadowy corners of human behaviour, and comes away with a story and a drama that is a most compelling page-turner. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||