by Henry Green
First published 2000
Jane Weatherby faces a crisis when her son Philip announces his engagement to Mary Pomfret. The bride's father is John Pomfret, with whom Jane had a passionate affair years earlier that nearly destroyed both their marriages. Now Jane is widowed and John has a new love interest, but their children want to marry despite having no money and possible blood relation. Jane sees opportunity in disaster. She teams up with John to delay the wedding plans, claiming they need time to sort out the young couple's finances. Their strategy involves endless conversations that circle around every topic except what really matters. While they talk, Jane puts her real plan into motion. She uses their meetings to seduce John away from his current woman. Jane proves herself a master manipulator, speaking constantly while revealing nothing of her true intentions. The more the former lovers discuss their children's future, the more Jane focuses on reclaiming her own past. Green constructs the entire drama through dialogue and misdirection, showing how people use words to hide rather than communicate.
Genres: fiction, drama, literary-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Period: 20th-Century
203 pages · Paperback · Dalkey Archive Press
Content warnings: gaslighting