POPULAR FICTION WENDY HOLDEN
HOW HARD CAN IT BE? by Allison Pearson (Borough Press £14.99)
THIs hugely enjoyable sequel to the super-successful I Don’t Know How she Does It finds Kate reddy in the provinces with a mid-life crisis. she’s desperate to get back on the highflying City bandwagon, but how is that possible given workplace ageism and sexism? Plus problems on the home front range from frail, ageing parents to a daughter whose bottom’s gone viral.
Kate is ‘sandwich woman’, caught between two generations, with only her vain, cycling husband to help her.
No wonder she’s a tad less ballsy than before . . . but Pearson’s take on contemporary mores is as sharp and witty as ever, and the scenes with the oldies are poignant.
You’ll root for plucky Kate as she claws her way back up the corporate pole and battles creepy bosses, creepier oligarchs and a tempting blast from the past in pursuit of personal fulfilment and family happiness.
NOW LET’S DANCE by Karine Lambert
(W&N £14.99) THIs uplifting novel is about late-in-life love, with the added twist of it being across class and national divides.
Posh Parisian Marguerite has just been widowed, while working- class Marcel has lost his wife. This is a tragedy for Marcel, who misses Nora and his Algerian homeland, but an awakening for Marguerite, who, in the absence of her stifling husband, realises life has passed her by.
Now in her 80s, she fears it’s all too late. But that’s before she and seventysomething Marcel meet in a health spa and fall in love.
Yet shadows threaten the fledgling affair in the shape of Marguerite’s greedy, bossy son. He wants control over her estate and tricks her into a care home.will Marcel find her and spring her out? This gorgeous, optimis- tic, often very funny love story is full of the joys and despairs of ageing, and written with a superb simplicity. It’s perfect for the young-at-heart.
MY MOTHER’S SHADOW by Nikola Scott
(Headline Review £7.99) AfTer her mother, elizabeth, dies in an accident, Addie’s mysterious twin sister, Phoebe, turns up. The story flips between elizabeth’s experiences in the late fifties and Addie’s life in London as she and Phoebe put together the pieces.
It seems that their straitlaced ma’s secret past included a rip-roaring affair with a handsome aristocrat and a shaming stint in a house for fallen women. But why was one twin girl given away and the other kept?
Gradually, the unlikely detectives uncover the complicated, tragic truth.
This thoughtful, sad and beautifullywritten debut reveals the hidden horrors of lace-curtained fifties Britain: helpless teenagers made pregnant by unscrupulous men and in the clutches of pitiless fathers.