![]() ![]() ![]() Eliza envies Joan's courage and adventurousness, being herself a well-educated but rather stodgy woman whose life as the childless spouse of a Foreign Office official has petered out into mindless rounds of volunteer work and shopping. ![]() Her blizzard of follow-up notes to Joan, which comprise all of Gardam's story, first rush to apologize for her forwardness, then capably detail Eliza's efforts to care for Joan's gloomy husband as they wait for the prodigal wife's return. But when one of those notesto Joan, across the streetincites that elusive woman to abandon her family for far more exotic locales, Eliza seems really to go off the deep end. The neighbors have always considered Eliza Peabody eccentric, with with her loudly voiced opinions, fearless stride, and the pious, admonishing notes she distributes for their enlightenment and edification. The 1991 Whitbread Award winner, by the English author of Crusoe's Daughter (1986), etc., sardonically traces the steady fall (or is it rise?) into madness of a suburban wife with too little to do and too many horrors to shut out of her mind. ![]()
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