This is a brave book in that it takes as its protagonists a group of women all in their fifties, admittedly actresses, most of them well-maintained and on HRT. Within a well-structured plot, which kicks off from a reunion of their drama school class of '59, the book tells a story of the 1990s intertwined with and arising from events of 1959-61; and it addresses the personal and professional difficulties of being women of that age, seen as becoming old while men are seen as 'in their prime', exacerbated as they inevitably are by the endless dramas of actors in search of work. In the end it is primarily a love story but on the way it illuminates the insecure world of the theatre and how it impacts on actors' - and actresses' - real lives.
My only reservation is that I wish Barbara Ewing had had a better copy editor since their are numerous sentences which consist of a list of main clauses linked by commas. Maybe the publishers decided that this was consistent enough to constitute a style but I found it deeply irritating. I do hope that in later books she learned about conjunctions and semicolons; but then I'm an old pedant! I think I am quite likely to try her again, perhaps her historical nvel partly set in her native New Zealand.

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Left on shelf by DianaHelen.....thank you.

obcz
21.6.07

OBCZ 16/8/07

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picked up