Afternoon Of A Good Woman

Description

Today, Tuesday, the day that Penelope has chosen to leave her husband, is the first really warm day of spring...' Penelope has always done her best to be a good wife, a good mistress, a good mother - and a good magistrate. Today she is more conscious that usual of the thinness of the thread that distinguishes good from bad, the law-abiding from the criminal. Sitting in court, hearing a short, sad case of indecent exposure and a long, confused theft, she finds herself examining her own sex life (how would all that sound in court?) her own actions and intentions while she observes the defendants in the dock. This novel is a tour-de-force , an ingeniously constructed novel in which Nina Bawden counterpoints public appearance with private behaviour in her heroine, Penelope. The result is a marvellous picture of a not always admirable but engagingly complex and very human heroine. As always, Bawden offers a compelling story, sharply witty and beautifully observed. But it is also an honest and provocative book tracing the divergent courses of morality and justice, and uncomfortably posing, as Penelope does of herself, the question: who and what is a good woman?

Nina Bawden, CBE, is one of Britain's most distinguished and best-loved novelists. She has published over forty novels and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Circles of Deceit. In 2004 she received the PEN Award for a Lifetime's Service to Literatur

'One of the wisest and most versatile of our novelists ... an intriguing achievement' CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH, THE GUARDIAN 'So intelligent and clear-eyed that every page seems to peel another layer of pretence, social custom or humbug from the surface of the life it describes' ISABEL QUIGLEY, FINANCIAL TIMES