Product Description

Lizzie and Frances are twins, together forming part of a unit. At least that's the way Lizzie sees things. Lizzie is the twin who has everything, husband, children, a flourishing career and a beautiful house and worries about Frances who seems to lead a solitary life in London ricocheting from one disastrous man to the next. Lizzie just wants Frances to share in her own complete and satisfying life. Then one day Frances announces she isn't coming to Lizzie's for Christmas, she's going to Spain instead. And, equally unexpectedly, Lizzie's world begins to tilt, Frances' Christmas defection seems overwhelmingly threatening to their unity. As Frances' future begins to change into something exciting and Lizzie's deteriorates as financial pressures eat into her ideal lifestyle, could it be that Frances is the twin with everything?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #205799 in Books
• Published on: 1994-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

From the Back Cover
‘Warm and wise, profoundly satisfying ...a perceptive chronicler of our times'Sunday Express

Lizzie and Frances are twins, together forming part of a unit.At least that’s the way Lizzie sees things. Lizzie is the twin who has everything – husband, children, a flourishing career, and a beautiful house. She worries about Frances, who seems to lead a solitary life in London ricocheting from one disastrous man to the next. Lizzie just wants Frances to share in her own complete and satisfying life.

Then Frances, suddenly and surprisingly, announces she isn’t coming to Lizzie’s for Christmas.She’s going to Spain.Lizzie's world began to tilt. Frances’s Christmas defection seems overwhelmingly threatening to their unity.

As Frances's future begins to change into something exciting and unexpected, and Lizzie's deteriorates as financial pressures eat into her ideal lifestyle, could it be that Frances is the twin with everything?

‘Her novels, like family life itself, are built on the tensions between the illusions of permanence and the reality of charm' Observer

About the Author
Joanna Trollope is the author of eagerly awaited and sparklingly readable novels often centred around the domestic nuaunces and dilemmas of life in present-day England. She has also written a number of historical novels and Britannia's Daughters, a study of women in the British Empire. Joanna Trollope was born in Gloucestershire and now lives in London. She was appointed OBE in the 1996 Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to literature.

Customer Reviews

My allegiance to each sister changed throughout the novel
This book tells the story of two sisters who both live very different lives. One is single and one is married with an ostensibly happy and successful life. As the story devleops, their lives change as does their luck. One takes the eponymous Spanish Lover as the other sees her life and business deteriorate. Preconceptions are shattered and the reader's allegiance is constantly changing throughout. Another theme that arises is that of familial expectation and the courage it takes to break it. Very readable and beautifully descriptive - should be sponsored by the Seville Tourist Board!

Exasperating and enthralling in equal measure
In many ways Trollope is a compelling writer: I kept reading because I wanted to know what would happen to these characters; the problem with this book, like many of her others, is that there is so much to be irritated by as well. An example of this is the way in which the adulterers unassailably occupy the moral highground (are we supposed to believe in the cardboardy mistress Juliet Jones with her patchwork and her pottery and her absurd gnomic pronouncements?) I liked Barbara, the mother of the twins, but Trollope makes it obvious that she doesn't (her authorial favouritism can be rather off-putting).

I couldn't help thinking that the historical chronology of the book is sometimes inaccurate. We are told that the twins were born in 1953. When they are ten, their mother goes off to Marrakech to follow the hippy trail. Isn't 1963 a bit early for this? Similarly on her return after a year or so, she becomes a convert to feminism. Again wasn't this development - in the 'women's lib' phase mocked by Trollope - later than 1964-65? Near the end of the book, we are told that the twins sneaked into the pictures to see Anthony Perkins in Desire under the Elms (tempted by the combination of star and the word 'desire' in the title) when they were underage. This film came out in 1958, making the twins five, slightly more underage than Trollope intended, I imagine. This sort of thing is so easily checked by author or editor, and I think it's a sign of sloppiness when nobody bothers (although perhaps it has been corrected by now: I've been reading the original hardback version).

Overall, she has a real talent as a storyteller - it's usually her characters I have trouble with.

about normal things that aren't so normal
Joanna Trollope... She writes about normal things that aren't so normal. Last time it was about adopted children and their chrisis, now it's about twins who are too dependant of each other... Lizzy and Frances are so very different. Lizzy has a husband, children and a good business, she has everything, and Frances doesn't. Not until she meets her Spanish lover, and things start changing for both of the twins. Once again everything that possibly go wrong between twins and their family happens... That is Joanna Trollope. It's always clear that she has done lots of research for her books. Is her heard in it then? Well, in this book more than in the previous one I read.

This one I liked okay. Twins are fascinating. That's why I picked up this book in the first place. The books was maybe nothing special, but definitely quite alright. All thou I didn't like the Spanish parts of the books too much. What does JT know about Spain? Probably more than me, but is that enough? Why did she have to get Frances a lover all the way from Spain to make it exiting... Oh, well. The grade is 3,4999...