‘A cast of nice, idiosyncratic characters . . . in the Turkish political climate’ NEW YORK TIMES
‘She held her readers’ attention with her taut, inventive unfolding of twists and turns’ GUARDIAN
‘The comedy lies, as in the best and subtlest of comedies, in the exquisite patterning’ NEW STATESMAN
George is an unusually successful travel agent, providing other people with the adventures he dare not risk. Though content to wrap himself in fantasies, he is haunted by the fact that ‘the important things happened whilst his back was turned’ and by the belief that he fathered the daughter – now a desirable young woman – of his best friends, Sam and Claire. To avoid temptation, George stumbles into a disastrous marriage and determines to mould himself into a supportive husband. But a holiday in Turkey snaps his private world when George finds himself in the midst of intrigue and murder and is forced to acknowledge that life is not the fairy-tale he’d imagined. In this superbly constructed and mercilessly observed novel, part comedy, part thriller, Nina Bawden exposes the fictions we impose on our lives.
‘She held her readers’ attention with her taut, inventive unfolding of twists and turns’ GUARDIAN
‘The comedy lies, as in the best and subtlest of comedies, in the exquisite patterning’ NEW STATESMAN
George is an unusually successful travel agent, providing other people with the adventures he dare not risk. Though content to wrap himself in fantasies, he is haunted by the fact that ‘the important things happened whilst his back was turned’ and by the belief that he fathered the daughter – now a desirable young woman – of his best friends, Sam and Claire. To avoid temptation, George stumbles into a disastrous marriage and determines to mould himself into a supportive husband. But a holiday in Turkey snaps his private world when George finds himself in the midst of intrigue and murder and is forced to acknowledge that life is not the fairy-tale he’d imagined. In this superbly constructed and mercilessly observed novel, part comedy, part thriller, Nina Bawden exposes the fictions we impose on our lives.
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Reviews
I like it as much as any novel I've read this year. The comedy lies, as in the best and subtlest of comedies, in the exquisite patterning, they way in which events bounce and reverberate
Nina Bawden develops a cast of nice, idiosyncratic characters whose chronic troubles suddenly become acute in the Turkish political climate
She held her readers' attention with her taut, inventive unfolding of twists and turns in her characters' lives, which were unpredictable but always true to their own complexities and relationships
