Daughters-in-Law - Couverture rigide

A captivating new novel from the master of domestic drama.

As the youngest of their three sons marries and Anthony and Rachel Brinkley welcome their third daughter-in-law to the family, no one quite realizes the profound shift about to take place. For their different reasons, the two previous daughters-in-law hadn't been able to resist Rachel's maternal clout and Anthony's gentle charms, and had settled into Brinkley family life without rocking the boat. But Charlotte — very young, very beautiful and semi-spoiled — has no intention of sharing power with her mother-in-law, and sets out to vanquish the matriarch. Soon Rachel's sons begin to treasonously think of their own houses as home, and of their mother's house as simply the place where their parents live — a necessary shift of loyalties that sets off fireworks in their mother's brain, breaks their father's heart and causes unexpected waves in their own marriages.

A lovely, candid and hugely perceptive exploration of what happens inside every family when one generation, with its ways and habits, has to make way for the next — and everyone needs to learn what family love means all over again.

When you've dedicated your life to your children, what happens when they grow up?

Rachel loves being at the centre of her large family. She has devoted herself fiercely to bringing up her three sons, but at their childhood home on the wide, bird-haunted coast of Suffolk, Rachel finds that her control begins to slip away. Other women - her daughters-in-law - are usurping her position. They have become more important to her boys than she is.

A crisis brings these subtle rifts to the surface.Can there be a way forward, if they are to survive as a family?