Oh this is a tough one. Joanna certainly knows how to put her thumb on a bruise and continually push till it hurts. Why Richie never divorced his first wife to marry the mother of his three girls, his partner for twenty-three years, is beyond me. Now he’s dead and there is a Will to sort out … oh dear. This is Joanna writing at the top of her game, as astute and sensitive as ever.
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.
Joanna Trollope was our Guest Editor in February 2012 - click here - to see the books that inspired her writing.
Joanna Trollope OBE has written numerous highly-acclaimed contemporary novels including: The Choir, A Village Affair, A Passionate Man, The Rector’s Wife, The Men and the Girls, A Spanish Lover, The Best of Friends, Next of Kin, Other People’s Children, Marrying the Mistress, Girl from the South, Brother and Sister, Second Honeymoon, Friday Night, The Other Family, Daughters-in-Law andThe Soldier's Wife. Under the name of Caroline Harvey she writes romantic historical novels. She has also written a study of women in the British Empire, Britannia’s Daughters.
Joanna Trollope was appointed OBE in the 1996 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to literature and was the Chair of Judges for the Orange Prize form Fiction 2012.
