The Marriage Bed (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

Meet Anne Graham, mother of three-year-old Martha and one-year-old Hugh, young, attractive, heavily pregnant -- and alone.

Things have not worked out at all the way Anne intended. Her teenage plans of marrying a rich Older Man who would put her through university when Max, the first suitable candidate to come along, married Anne's mother, Billie, instead. Then her promising academic career was cut short when her first real romance led to an unexpected pregnancy and an early marriage. Finally, and much more recently, her stable home life crumbled with her husband's announcement that he was leaving her to move into a commune with his secretary.

Now she is a housebound single mother of two and three-quarter children, whose intellectual life has shrunk to stolen moments of bedtime reading.

It's not that her life is dull. There are dishes to wash and floor to vacuum, and for variety there are trips to the vet with her neurotic, eczema-ridden dog and unexpected visits from her sweetly disapproving mother-in-law. However, it's not at all what Anne Graham had in mind when she was planning her academic future.

The solution to her problem is clear to her friends and neighbours. She must find someone to mind the children and then go back to school or get a job. Or is it?

Once again, Constance Beresford-Hower has approached a common theme from an uncommon point of view, with her own blend of perceptiveness and ironic humour. The result is a book that is gritty, entertaining, and, ultimately, optimistic -- just like its heroine.