POPULAR FICTION
THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES by Maeve Haran (Pan £7.99)
The Time of Their Lives by Maeve Haran
I’ve never read Haran’s famous Having It All, but on the evidence of this I’m going right out to buy it.
An extended riff on the challenges of ageing, TTOTL is also a buddy movie.
It’s set in contemporary London and stars four sixty-something women, best friends since student days who still meet regularly to drink bad wine and compare notes. As the story opens, feminine Laura is celebrating 25 years of happy marriage, widow Ella has been landed with her neighbour’s allotment and Claudia and Sal are respectively a French teacher and a magazine editor.
A mere few weeks later Laura’s marriage is on the rocks, a new man’s moved into Ella’s elegant home and urban Claudia has moved to the country. Sacked Sal, meanwhile, is finding the 60-plus job market a chilly place.
The novel follows the friends coping with these seismic events and the many others they lead to. It’s warm, clever, wise and extremely funny. Among its many virtues are lovable characters — some, like the Asian supermarket owners, of a Shakespearean brilliance — and insights that will strike a chord with everyone.
No disrespect to Maeve, but this book would make a fantastic sitcom.
A PERFECT HERITAGE by Penny Vincenzi (Headline £19.99)
A Perfect Heritage by Penny Vincenzi
Vincenzi, P, writes novels the size of the Bible and with about as many subplots. This new saga revolves round an ailing family-owned British cosmetics firm called House of Farrell. Big in the Swinging Sixties, its fortunes have since dwindled but are now to be turned round by thrusting new CEO Bianca Bailey. Yet she soon finds she’s bitten off more than she can chew.
The most unchewable bit is snooty Athina Farrell, octogenarian matriarch of the business. She hates Bianca and does everything to thwart her. Then Bianca’s reliably wimpy husband, Patrick, gets a high-powered job himself and becomes even more thrusting than his wife.
With both parents away from the family home, life there starts to fall apart. When daughter Milly is bullied at her posh school, neither Patrick nor Bianca realises (the Milly strand was the subplot I liked best; genuinely dramatic). And as things get tough at the perfume house, what will bedevilled Bianca do?
Add to this central having-it-all dilemma some juicy subplots involving a violent relationship, a Father 4 Justice, a long-concealed affair and glamorous locations all over the world, and you have a great summer read. In every sense of the word.
THE VACATIONERS by Emma Straub (Picador £7.99)
The Vacationers by Emma Straub
If you're staying in a luxury villa with your family this summer, here’s one to read by the pool.
The Post family from New York are renting a luxury villa in Mallorca; they’re together for a fortnight with their individual problems. Matriach Franny’s furious about patriarch Jim’s infidelity. Jim’s just been sacked for said offence and faces a jobless void at 60. Daughter Sylvia’s determined to lose her virginity, son Bobby has commitment issues and his gym-instructor girlfriend feels everyone despises her.
Completing this merry line-up is Franny’s friend Charles and his husband, Lawrence, though they’re the sanest of the lot.
Straub is telling in her observation, superb in her perception and awesome in her control of her plot. She writes with a bleak, spare wit and does not seem too fond of her wonderfully-drawn characters.
There is a Mike Leigh feel to this novel, for all its Americans-in-Spain setting, which makes the positive resolution at the end feel slightly forced. Brilliant, nonetheless.
