Intimate Strangers [Hardcover]

Juliette Mead (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1996

Mutually delighted by the idea to swap houses for the summer, the British Callahans and the American McCarthys begin holidays that soon test their marital limits and secret desires. Lit Guild Alt.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The catalyst: an ad, impulsively placed with the Worldwide Home Exchange Club by British journalists Maggie and Oliver Callahan of Brockhampton House in Wiltshire. The next step: an impulsive reply from Christy and Gabe McCarthy of Oak Ridge, an almost plantation-sized house in rural North Carolina. The result: a seemingly innocent eight-week house swap that will end in the destruction of both marriages. The Callahans know something is amiss in their marriage?Oliver is a compulsive liar with a habit of adultery, and Maggie loathes the fact that her chauvinistic husband has begun to consider her just a housewife. When, on the eve of their departure for America, Oliver disappears to London, Maggie retaliates by sleeping with their closest friend, antique auctioneer Edward Arabin. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, attorney Gabe McCarthy adores his wife and young son but fears that Christy sometimes finds him boring. A justifiable suspicion, for Christy arrives in England in search of an emotion that will be "dangerous and awful." When she stumbles upon an unfinished novel, A Sad Affair, in Oliver's study, Christy is certain she's found the man who can fulfill the fantasy. Then, "a freak combination of a stray cat, a milk bottle, and a prank doorbell ringer" brings Oliver back to London and into Christy's waiting dreams. British-American writer Mead's bright and engaging novel of love, manners and temptation succeeds in being sensual without relying on gratuitous sex, and finishes with a surprising epilogue that promises a real shock for the obsessed Christy when the true authorship of A Sad Affair is revealed. Literary Guild alternate.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Christy and Gabe McCarthy appear to be the perfect couple. They live in Oak Ridge, an antebellum North Carolina residence; maintain a beach home; dote upon their only child; and live the upscale life that is featured in Southern Living. Maggie and Oliver Callahan live in a 19th-century family manse in Wiltshire, England, have two children, and fight often due to Oliver's infidelities and Maggie's unfulfilled career aspirations. When the two families switch homes for summer vacations, their lives become entangled, and the fault lines in the two marriages widen. Christy falls for Oliver, Maggie has an intimate liaison with friend and neighbor Edward, and Gabe is stunned and aghast. In her debut American novel, Mead smartly explores the saga of modern relationships gone astray but provides a neat and tidy finish for those who love happy endings. For popular fiction collections.?Mary Ellen Elsbernd, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Pocket Books (October 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671537946
• ISBN-13: 978-0671537944
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,856,465 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Slow read, June 13, 2008

By 

Tom Gee (Apex, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Intimate Strangers (Hardcover)

The premise of this book sounded interesting - a house swap between a British couple and a North Carolina couple, neither of whom knew the other. The reading is very slow and tedious but at least the author differentiates each of the many characters in this book. In addition to the principal four people making up the 2 couples, we have kids, nannys, neighbors, bosses, secretaries and friends. That's a lot of characters. A failing marriage dissolves and a good marriage also dissolves - the ending is not very conclusive but probably realistic as the British guy, Oliver, ends up marrying the American girl Christy.

5.0 out of 5 stars Refreshing comedy of marriage, July 25, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Intimate Strangers (Hardcover)

Restless and out-of-sorts, the British Callahans and the American McCarthys attempt to spice up their summer with a trans-Atlantic home-swap. Big mistake. Or is it? In British author Mead's witty novel of marriage gone awry, people have a refreshing resilience.

Christy Callahan, former stockbroker and Southern belle, turned quintessential housewife and mother, is bored with her role and her husband, Gabe, a hapless, talented lawyer whose consuming goal is her happiness.

And Maggie Callahan is full of resentment toward her successful and philandering journalist husband, Oliver, and fears that she may be doomed to tawdry domestication forever. Oliver, a compulsive liar, rather likes his life the way it is.

Christy is the catalyst for change. A fount of energy, Christy takes on the Wiltshire neighborhood and her borrowed house with crusader's zeal. Enchanted by Oliver's eclectic library (entirely inherited unbeknownst to her), she comes across an unpublished novel about his great doomed love affair and becomes obsessed with his passion.

Mead's character depictions, particularly the women, are unsparing without being unsympathetic. While most novels of dysfunctional marriage, no matter how clever, tend to be arid and bleak, this one is absorbing and deliciously ironic, full of unexpected twists and turns.

A delightful and thoughtful book, Mead's American debut, should win her plenty of new fans.

4.0 out of 5 stars The truths and lies on which lives are based, September 16, 2000

By 

Marcy L. Thompson (Sammamish, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Intimate Strangers (Paperback)

This plot of this book is pretty straight-forward: a British couple and American couple swap their houses for the summer. Living in one another's houses, they become entwined (to various degress, depending on the individual) in each other's lives. As the sumer progresses, their lives begin to unravel and then weave themselves into different shapes. The writing is occasionally intrusive, and one of the four main characters is significantly less well-drawn then the other three; for these reasons, I gave the book only four stars.

_Intimate_Strangers_ is full of thought-provoking situations and events. It avoids an easy or clean ending, leaving the reader to ponder the prognosis for a relationship built on a significant lie. The tagged-on epilogue is laugh-out-loud funny.