Joy and conflict in affairs of the heart

deep down she senses that something is missing from her life, “a taint at the back of every happiness”.

So it is perhaps unsurprising that for the past two years Nancy has been having an affair with fellow psychologist Adam. They fell in love “by increments, with the occasional quantum leap”.

Nancy reflects: “Stef is a good man and a textbook father. A faithful partner. All of these things and more but he is not Adam, at whose nearness all logic collapses.”

Adam would leave his wife for Nancy. But Nancy has always been frank about the fact that she couldn’t bear to break up her family and she cannot offer him any more than they have.

So they snatch time together at the practice offices they share and from time to time go away

under the guise of attending psychology conferences.

While Nancy is juggling her marriage and her affair she has abundant family worries to occupy her mind.

Her teenage daughter Frieda is unsettled, keeping Nancy at arm’s length. Then Stef insists on inviting Adam and his actress wife Tara to the birthday party of Nancy’s brother David.

There both of her worlds collide when Frieda, an aspiring actress, makes a beeline for Tara who takes the teenager under her wing and the pair form a close bond that unsettles Nancy. Then her brother David, who for Nancy is both “my first love” and “selfish and cruel”, disappears.

Family stress combines with mounting pressures at work to force Nancy to confront her own needs at last.

Love After Love’s jacket hints that it is a thriller and this is reinforced by some red herrings in the opening pages.

But in fact it is something more subtle, reflective and thought provoking. And you become just as anxious for the wellbeing of its characters as when reading a menacing thriller. This rich and rewarding novel captures one woman’s inner life and conflicts with acuity.

It is insightful about the legacy of the family that shaped us and the legacy we leave to the family we shape.

It is also the kind of controversial novel that will be catnip to book groups, exploring the question of when our lives and identities become subsumed by looking after other people and at what point it is reasonable to say: “Enough,” and to put yourself front and centre.