Center Point Premier Fiction (Large Print)
3 total works
Rachel has always loved being at the centre of her large family. She has fiercely devoted herself to her three sons all their lives,and continues to do so even now they are all grown up. They are, of course, devoted to her - she and Anthony, their father, hold the family together at their big, beautiful, ramshackle house near the wide, bird-haunted coast of Suffolk. But when Luke, her youngest, gets married, Rachel finds that control is slipping away. Other people seem to be becoming more important to her children than she is, and she can no longer rely on her role as undisputed matriarch. A power struggle develops which can only end in unhappiness; her three daughters-in-law want to do things their own way, and so, to her grief, do her sons...
Chrissie always believed that Richie loved her, had loved her for all the twenty-three years they'd been together, loved their three daughters and their house in Highgate and their happy, lively existence. But if she really was the love of his life, why had he never given her the one thing that would have made her life perfect? The ring she wore was not a wedding ring, and it did not bring her the security of marriage. That belonged, still, to Margaret, back in Newcastle where Richie had started off as a musician, before he became famous. Margaret and her son Scott never saw Richie, and had never met the three girls. They were his other family, not mentioned but always in Chrissie's mind, an obstacle to her complete happiness. And then, suddenly and shockingly, Richie is no longer there, and Chrissie and the girls have to learn to manage without him. The presence of the other family becomes, all at once, impossible to ignore - not least because they are involved in Richie's will. Old resentments, and feelings of abandonment and loss, have to jostle with the practicalities of money and property...
It's Eleanor who starts the Friday nights. From her window she sees two young women, with small children, separate, struggling and plainly lonely, and decides to ask them in, and see what happens. What happens is that a group gradually forms, a group of six different and disparate women, who become a circle of friends. They range in age from Jules, who is twenty-two and wants to be a DJ, to Eleanor herself, who is a retired professional and walks with a stick. They include one wife, three mothers, three singletons and five working women. They all of them, variously, value Friday nights. And then one of them meets a man - an enigmatic significant man - and the whole dynamic changes. The bonds that have been so closely forged are tested - and some of them break. With wit and warmth, Joanna Trollope explores the complexities, the sabotages, and the shifting currents of modern friendship.