LoveReading Says
Centred around the lives and friendship between three octogenarian women who’ve retired to Tuscany, Amanda Craig’s The Three Graces presents a rich, multi-dimensional tapestry of generational dissonance, of clashes between the old and the new, of older-age strains and regrets, and younger lives struggling to find their best course.
“What would you like to be different about your life?” So asks one of the characters towards the end of the novel, a question that almost cuts to its core. In addition, through its unexpected turns, The Three Graces also explores whether we’re more united by commonalities than divided by difference and prejudice as it takes in the post-COVID, post-Brexit world, the migrant crisis, the war in Ukraine, and a generation of young adults who can barely afford to pay rent.
“Both Ruth and Marta were retired on excellent pensions and the proceeds of their homes in North London, but Diana told them that she and her husband now lived on the State Pension. The former owners of Fol Castle in Cornwall, they had passed it on to their son to avoid inheritance tax”. Alongside this difference in financial circumstance, the three women lead very different day-to-day lives. After spending her early married life with her philandering husband in the land formerly known as Rhodesia, these days Diana cares for him through his advanced dementia, wondering “how much longer she could continue without putting a pillow over her husband’s face and suffocating him while he slept.”
Meanwhile, musician Marta is determined to keep playing, and insists, “I do not think about what I can’t change…That is the secret of happiness, you know. To live in the present and never look back, like Orpheus.” Then there’s Ruth, whose hedge fund manager grandson Olly has come to Tuscany to marry damaged Tanya, a “living doll” vlogger influencer. Despite their differences, the three women are each other’s lifelines.
As the plot skilfully winds to the wedding day, Tuscan Enzo, a friend of the women, is beset by bigotry and shoots an illegal migrant, while a Russian oligarch hides from Putin in his high-security palazzo.
Reflective, surprising and thought-provoking, and infused with mystery and tension, with The Three Graces Amanda Craig has created an enthralling, entertaining story world that’s quick to have you in its multi-layered, character-driven thrall.
Joanne Owen
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The Three Graces Synopsis
'A brilliant piece of storytelling that revels in the world of expat old ladies in Tuscany, and should be the book that everybody's reading this summer' Andrew O'Hagan
'In the Tuscan hilltop village of Santorno, the setting for Amanda Craig's entertaining and bracing new novel, the Three Graces of her title are preparing for a spring wedding. Adorning this idyll Craig's Graces - Ruth, Marta and Diana - are a trio of elderly expatriates with a total of "four breasts, five eyes and three hip replacements" between them... witty, sharp-eyed and ridiculously enjoyable' Christobel Kent,
GuardianWhen Enzo, a local villager, shoots an illegal immigrant from his bedroom window one night it triggers a series of events that embroil old and young, rich and poor, native and foreign.
'Enjoyable and provocative... romantic and realistic' Emily Rhodes,
Spectator'I absolutely LOVED The Three Graces. It's about Tuscany and Umbria and Italy and immigration and ageing and generational divides and art and beauty and music and suffering and love and joy and life. It's bursting with compassion and wisdom' Christina Patterson
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780349144917 |
| Publication date: |
2nd May 2024 |
| Author: |
Amanda Craig |
| Publisher: |
Abacus an imprint of Little, Brown |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
395 pages |
| Primary Genre |
General Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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Amanda Craig Press Reviews
Hugely entertaining - Telegraph
I revelled in The Three Graces - such an intriguing cast, so convincingly presented, and a narrative that continually surprises. The Tuscan backdrop is illuminating, the apposition between old and young so persuasively displayed. A terrific read. - Penelope Lively
People talk about the infirmities of old age, but what about the firmities? What about the beliefs, the events, the politics, the odd secret? The Three Graces is a brilliant piece of storytelling that revels in the world of expat old ladies in Tuscany, and it should be the book everybody's reading this summer. The setting's idyllic, the air is mild in May, but there's a threat of England and family histories just beyond the horizon. It's a novel E.M. Foster would've loved. - Andrew O'Hagan, author of Mayflies
Gorgeous and generous... rich with characters and suffused with sunlight. It has so much to say on age - the three graces of the title are all over eighty; wonderful to have elderly characters, so usually marginal, right at the centre of the plot - Lissa Evans, author of Old Baggage
I love Amanda Craig's work, always supercharged with bright colouration and passionate feeling. And her imagination seems boundless: a defiant, bubbling wellspring of free-wheeling enquiry in a literary landscape made more and more arid and monotonous - Rose Tremain
About Amanda Craig
Amanda Craig was born in 1959, and brought up in Italy and Britain. After reading English Literature at Clare College Cambridge, she worked in advertising and journalism before becoming a full-time novelist. She is the author of seven novels, Foreign Bodies (1990), A Private Place (1991) A Vicious Circle (1996), In a Dark Wood (2000) Love In Idleness (2003), Hearts And Minds (2009) and The Lie of the Land (2017). Often compared to Dickens, Trollope and Jane Austen, the Telegraph said "She has everything you look for in a major writer: wit, indignation, an ear for the telling phrase andan unflagging attention to all the individual choices by which we define ourselves." The Lie of the Land was chosen as a Book of the Year by siux national newspapers, was a YOU magazine Book Club choice and a Radio 4 Book At Bedtime. She is currently writing a new novel for Little, Brown to be published in 2020. She has two children, lives in London and contributes regularly to The Observer and The New Statesman.
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