A story of family ties and emotional turmoil.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The milieu of her 10th and latest novel is familiar Billington terrain. Mary and David Tempest's comfortable, largely unexamined life as upper-middle-class London professionals is called forcibly and irrevocably into question by the sudden appearance of Mary's illegitimate daughter, given up for adoption 22 years earlier. In a quest for her natural parents, Elizabeth Crocker, the U.S.-reared daughter for whom Mary appears totally devoid of maternal feelings or compassion, acts as the catalyst for a mid-life marital crisis for both the Tempests and a neighboring Foreign Office couple on whom their lives impinge. Elizabeth also disturbs the life of her much older father, Richard Beck, and her college-age stepsister, Lucy Tempest. Lucy and her boyfriend Jo are as well-captured here as Elizabeth is not; Billington has a tourist's understanding of Americans. But the English characters' bilious perception of the girl's Americanness rings true, and so does their reluctance to scrutinize themselves very deeply. It would be interesting to plumb David's arrogant hypocrisy and self-indulgence, Mary's coldness and their mutual lack of self-knowledge and moral stature for which adulterous couplings serve as a substitute. Unfortunately, Billington's unsympathetic characters are curiously dimensionless and, as a result, uninteresting.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
A quick and fairly satisfying story of an affluent, 40-year-old Englishwoman, Mary, whose life is abruptly altered when her adopted-at-birth American daughter finds her 22 years later. This meeting is the catalyst for Mary (now married with another daughter) to seek the father, whom she loved but has not seen since she was 18. In the process the author examines what men and women want, what a parent is, reality versus illusion, youth versus age, and especially, what love is. Although many questions about Mary are left unanswered until late in the plot and some inconsistencies exist, this tenth novel by Billington will appeal to public libraries with demand for either engaging British fiction about the upper class or for the author's work. Rebecca Sturm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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