Leroy, I think it’s the two women sharing a bus seat, but they’re made prettier and more fashionable for whatever reason.

Laurence, I think the prize was well meant, but arguably also a little insulting. She’s a good enough writer that she doesn’t need consolation prizes. Besides, if her why not others?

Stu, fair point on the Greene quote, though how widely read he is by women I’ve no idea. Generally women will read books written by men far more than men will books written by women (bizarre as that seems). Novels like Travels with My Aunt, or Brighton Rock, I suspect have a fairly cross- gender appeal.

There is a tendency in fiction to treat male experience as the default, so that when a man writers about feeling life is passing him by in a frustrating job and stale marriage it’s seen to speak to universal themes of aging and loss. The same themes when written by a woman are often seen as domestic. I’m far from unique in making that observation, but I think it’s why you can put quotes from Greene on a book marketed squarely at women without a problem, because women aren’t put off by male recommendations as much as many men seem to be by female ones.

All of which aside, this is a tremendous book and it does speak beyond the domestic. The particulars are a cowed woman escaping a stultifying marriage and a theatrical dreamer who isn’t as amazing as she thinks she is, but the exploration of the collision of compromise and dreams (to boil it down in a way that actually loses much else of what’s happening) is something which reaches far beyond the specifics of these women’s situation.

A comparison to Farrell is always going to score well with me.

Wasn’t it made into a film, recently?

Emma, good point, I did finish it recently. I’ve added it in, possibly out of sequence but so it goes. Thanks for reminding me, it would have been a shame not to have written that up.