Deborah Moggach must have written this book with her tongue firmly pushing against her cheek. Like an exam question: "How can the lives of the members of a nice middle class family disintegrate". Discuss. At the head of the family are Gordon and Dorothy running a firm of builders. Then there are the three grown up daughters, one married with two awkward (what else) children. All their relationships are in peril. This is not always a happy story, but it is told with wit and charm and, at times, totally gripping. As ever with Moggach, no literary masterpiece but a good story.
I felt this was a much better book than her "Daisy Jones and the Six". A well told story if not a literary masterpiece. Monique is a young writer who is chosen by elderly Hollywood star Evelyn Hugo to write her biography, for some reason she will not divulge. Evelyn admits she is not the nicest of women, seven husbands says it all. All was going fine until an event that was so fanciful towards the end spoilt it for me. In these later chapters it all becomes too melodramatic for my taste. I just wish it had finished a lot sooner.
This book was a challenge. Some of it was just a jumble, at times it seemed like a kind of experimental prose and at others it was just brilliant. It was one of those books that I had to go back after 20 or 30 pages and write down a list of all the guests who stay at this French chateaux for Christmas. Even then I was constantly muddled between Luciana and Tatiana. And of course there is Inspector Blanc.
However, we are off in Part 2 to Algiers in both 1945 and 1957. A kind of back story for Yasmina that alternates with Jane and Jim. I never really understood their relevance to the story. New characters appear with their different stories in an ad hoc uprising against the French occupation. There is one part narrated by Jasmina that is both weird but atmospheric.
In Part 3 we are back at the chateaux. To wrap things up? We should be so lucky.
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