Obsessively neat Lily, a writer who writes
about writers, is asked to
interview the enigmatic journalist and photographer Rita Boothe.
Leafing through a book of Rita's from the early seventies, Lily
notices a picture of an incandescently sexy young woman sitting
in a limousine swigging Jack Daniels. It's her mother, Mattie.
Lily isn't shocked. She's jealous. She wants to be like that,
beautiful, abandoned. But Mattie is no longer meltingly gorgeous.
In their neglected house, she and her husband scrape by and
bicker. Upstairs Grandpa flirts on the Internet. Marie, Lily's
sister is facing a custody suit and her brother Rory avoids
coming home.
Lily is usually the one to sort the family out, but she’s
tired of being boring and dependable. She wants to let go,
be a woman of wicked mystery and intrigue. Like the one in
the photograph.
Paperback
- £6.99 - 0 7553 0082 3 - June 2005
‘Secrets, jokes, abortive plans, hopes and suspicions
all play their part in this intricate and absorbing portrait
of a year in one 'ordinary’ family’s life’
Woman & Home |
