Everything will be all right

This novel was widely and favourably reviewed in national papers (e.g. Guardian and TLS) and shortlisted for the Encore Award for second novels; reviewers stressed the success of the writing approach, addressing familiar subject matter at the core of the English realist novel tradition (family relationships, adultery, childhood) but in a new voice and using a discontinuous narrative style, spotlighting moments within a continuum rather than suggesting the fluid unrolling of consecutive time (originality). The novel addresses the large theme of change, particularly in women's lives, between the end of the second world war and the present, exploring this not simplistically as' advances' in women's liberation but rather as exchanges: some kinds of power, some versions of self, being substituted for others (significance). Those parts of the novel set in the past are meticulously researched, but the value of this representation of cultural change recorded comes from the vivid 'imagining' of past lives, and the use of a shifting set of conflicting, mutually challenging, points of view (rigour). Published in USA by Holt, ISBN 0805070656.