An absolute page-turner! I could not put this book down and read it over a weekend. It is a haunting and disturbing exploration of the meaning of love within a close-knit family, the Dunbars. Flora, a twin, never feels she quite fits. The book opens with her own account of her funeral and then jumping backwards and forwards through the years of her childhood, adolescence, marriage and motherhood, we see how her quest for love and happiness lead her along a destructive path of alcoholism, broken hearts and painful truths which eventually lead to her downfall. This is a disturbing tragedy but one in which you feel drawn to the characters and have sympathy for each of them in their complex web of tangled emotions. Long after the last page is read, you are still caught up in the emotions of the Dunbars. Find a place for it in your holiday luggage!
Greedy for experience but determined to be good, Flora Dunbar spends a lifetime seeking love, trying to build a future out of the wreckage of her past - an eccentric childhood spent in the shadow of her musical twin, Rory; early marriage to Hugh, a clergyman twice her age; motherhood, which brings her Theo, the son she cannot love; middle-age, when she finds brief happiness in a scandalous affair with her nephew, Colin.
Linda Gillard graduated from Bristol University and trained as an actress at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. For eight years she pursued an acting career, the highlight of which was sharing a table in The National Theatre canteen with Sir Michael Gambon. (The lowlight was playing a fairy for four rainy months in an open-air production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in London’s Regent’s Park).
Whilst under-employed at the National Theatre, Linda accidentally became a successful freelance journalist and wrote many articles based on her self-sufficient “Good Life” in rural Cambridgeshire. For twelve years she had a humorous column in Ideal Home. Linda ran her two careers concurrently for a while, then decided to give up acting to raise a family and write from home. Twelve years later she re-trained as a primary teacher and taught in Norfolk specialising in English and Art.
A further rethink entailed giving up teaching and downshifting to the Isle of Skye, realising a long-held dream to move to a Scottish island and write full-time.
