This is a woman's book and that is a compliment! This book has a central plot that is good and umistakable but the way the story unfolds is definitely in the style of a soap opera that women have best evolved to follow.

The other aspect of this book that makes it a woman's story is the the central character is, essentially, in the process of finding herself. Whether she should stay with her husband; how has she come to terms with going from riches to rags; the impact of her long dead mother on her personality and life; the characters that come to surround her as the book unwinds.

The book starts in a spectacularly feminine was as the central character's eventually to be step mother thinks she is destined to spend the rest of her life with the central character's soon to be father! The first two chapters or so drag us around a ball in a snow encased country house and at this stage I felt the book was eminently put downable. I was lost in a fog and was relieved in a sense to learn that the soon to be father was found in flagrante delicto with another woman. Oh the relief: get a grip woman!

From that point on, having set some of the scene, this book settled down into a nice routine that kept me happily page turning until it finished.

The other aspect of the book that makes it a woman's book is the number and complexity of characters that it introduces.

Suzanna, the heroine
Neil, her husband and formerly well paid and successful
Athene real, dazzling but wayward, mother
Alejandro, the Argentinian, male, midwife
Vivi, step mother
Rosemary, decrepit grandmother ensconced in the granexial unit!
Douglas, the father and both Athene and Vivi's husband
Jessie, the springtime breath of fresh air who wafted in and was untimely snuffed out
Jason, Jessie's partner and the father of Jessie's daughter

There's Arturro and Liliane and a few more characters thrown in who all add spice to this story.

Suzanna tries to find herself by becoming independent: opening up a shop, sorry emporium, in her own image. Jessie breezes in one day totally out of the blue and has a big impact on the emporium and Suzanna.

Whilst the emporium needs to be a huge success, it might be. Jessie is just a young woman but she gives Suzanna lots of ideas and her boundless energy and enthusiasm is infectious. Jessie is the real commercial driving force behind the emporium if the truth be told.

Suzanna is grumpy. She is depressed. She is in a pointless marriage: as far as she is concerned anyway. Her single most annoying habit is the seemingly endless stream of her saying What? at the drop of a hat. I almost got to the stage of counting how many times she and the other characters said What? in what has become the British Radio 4 Drama style.

Violence? Or passion?
What?
page 179

You getting the sleepwalking?
What?
page 202

I don't think your man was too keen either from what he told me
What?
page 391

It's both of us we - we don't fit any more.
What?
page 393

Alejandro drops into the story in the way that women write too: Argentinian, son of a doctor and a depressive. He decides to work in England for a while as a midwife, having previously qualified as a doctor.

Happenstance takes Alejandro to the emporium and Suzanna eventually realises that he is more important to her than she should like. Without wanting to ruin anything for you, I can reveal that Alenjandro becomes central to Jessie's life, Suzanna's life and to the life of the emporium.

A bold series of events, however, absolutely smashes the relative tranquility of the semi rural area in which the book is set. Someone dies, someone's marraige ends, someone realises that love has found her but that she might have lost yet another chance.

After around a quarter of the book I began to enjoy this book and would strongly recommend it to men and women alike. Learn to work your way through the ball and the pages that follow and wait until Suzanna gets into her stride and Jessie turns up. Safely ignore the bits about Athene and her bloody portrait but wonder why one part of her story is essentially repeated: that didn't make much sense to me I'm afraid.

 

© Duncan Williamson
6 January 2005

© Webmaster Duncan Williamson 2005