I used to covet these Abacus editions of Alison Lurie’s books while hanging out in the Old Brompton Road branch of Waterstone’s in the early 1990s. The surprising thing is that I never read any of them at the time. I found this one on Darren’s shelves, complete with bus ticket bookmark (the 373, October 1992). It’s still taken me a long time to get to read it, and Darren says he never did finish it.

It’s six years since I read Foreign Affairs and I need to get round to the rest of Lurie’s books faster than that! I loved this. Mostly it plods along nicely (which I mean as a compliment!) and then the ending is great. I think I’m better off reading them at 40 than 20 so I’m glad I left them on the shelves for so many years.