When 62-year-old judge Guy Stockdale announces his intention of leaving his wife of 40 years to marry his 31-year-old mistress - his honour's totty, as the clerk of the court so succinctly puts it - well, it's bound to cause a bit of a flurry among the herbaceous borders, what? Joanna Trollope knows what middle England is made of, and in this entertaining family saga she picks away at the veneer of respectability and politeness to get at the untidy, sometimes chaotic emotions beneath. With the exception of the abandoned wife - who is, frankly, a charmless old bat, neatly removing the need for the reader to feel even the slightest twinge of guilt - the assorted members of the extended Stockdale family (including a feisty daughter-in-law, a lovelorn teenager and the inevitable gay man, well-adjusted and happy for once) are engaging and amusing, and the pace never slacks for a second as Trollope romps to the finishing-post in competent, confident prose.
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