It's Eleanor who starts the Friday nights. From her window she sees two young women, with small children, separate, struggling and plainly lonely - and decides to ask them in, and see what happens. What happens is that a group gradually forms, a group of six different and disparate women, who become a circle of friends. They range in age from Jules, who is twenty-two and wants to be a DJ, to Eleanor herself, who is a retired professional and walks with a stick. They include one wife, three mothers, three singletons and five working women. They all of them, variously, value Friday nights. And then one of them meets a man - an enigmatic significant man - and the whole dynamic changes. The bonds that have been so closely forged are tested - and some of them break. With wit and warmth, Joanna Trollope explores the complexities, the sabotages, and the shifting currents of modern friendship.
I have been a fan of Joanna Trollope for many years and I did enjoy this book, but to be honest, not as much as her previous novels. There were almost too many characters, all of whom were flawed in some way, and I found them all intensely irritating and frustrating, apart from Lindsay and Noah, both of whom, under-standably I suppose, seemed extremely sad. I longed for some normality in their lives - or pehaps that is normality in London.
Not, in my opinion, up to her usual standards, but still well worth reading.
