Product Description

Against the backdrop of a festival of the arts, this diverse set of characters meet and mingle... Long after the festival is over the choices that they have had to make resonate, as sacrifices and compromises combine, and life, somehow, carries on.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9969 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'[an] absorbing novel about family, romantic and parental love.'
--Woman & Home

'Howard remains a clear-eyed observer of human foibles and an elegist for a gentler world'
--Sunday Telegraph

'This is a tender story of love and its consequences'
--Daily Express

Review
'A wistful and slow-growing tragedy set in the Sixties.'

Review
An absorbing novel about family, romantic and parental love

Customer Reviews

Family saga - it takes all types - fascinating!
Love All
Persephone (Percy) ends a relationship and goes back to live with her beloved aunt, Florence, a talented landscape gardener, with whom she had spent most of her childhood.

Thomas is a widower with a small child, Harriet (Hatty). When his wife, Celia, died, he fell apart. Francis is Celia's brother. Mary, Thomas' sister looks after Thomas, Hatty and Francis.

Jack Curtis, self-made man of means, buys the country home that used to belong to Thomas and Mary's parents, and where they both spent their childhood. He hires Florence to landscape the neglected gardens and restore them to their former glory.

There is a fascinating interplay between these and other characters as events unfold.

The characters are believable, although occasionally I would like to have given one of them a good shaking!

Selfishness, indecision, devotion to duty, unrequited love, true love and committment, warmth, generosity, meanness - it is all there - and it makes for a very good read.

A huge disappointment
Elizabeth Jane Howard is one of my favourite authors and I was thrilled at the thought of a new book by her. Unfortunately, despite the rich and descriptive writing, I found the characters in this novel completely unengaging - more cyphers than real people and I did not in the end care what happened to any of them.

Disappointing
What a disappointing read. Long and drawn out, with ill-defined characters who were sketchily drawn and unengaging. In fact, I had to keep reminding myself who was who. Couldn't understand why the book was set in the 1960s; the social and moral sentiments of the story would have stood up in a contemporary setting. Indeed, some actions in the book, such as eating pizza and having wine to offer readily at home, seemed rather advanced for the period. There were a few potential intriguing elements of the story that needed more development and other strands that were overdone and tedious.