Nina Bawden’s powerful exploration of deception gradually unfolds a moving story about lies and truths, forgery and fidelity, love and loss.
Nina Bawden’s portrait of a family in crisis raises fundamental questions about parents and children, offering tentative hope, but no tidy solutions.
The expulsion from school of their eldest son shatters the middle-class security of Maggie and Charlie. Veering between private agony and public cheerfulness, Maggie and Charlie struggle to support their son and cope with the reactions - and advice - of friends and relatives.
Nina Bawden’s 1970 novel was one of the six books shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker, in 2010.
About the Author
Nina Bawden was the author of more than 50 books for adults and children and was perhaps best known for her children’s novel Carrie’s War (1973), a story of wartime child evacuees.