A Spanish Lover - Couverture souple

'Warm and wise, profoundly satisfying ...a perceptive chronicler of our times'Sunday Express

Lizzie and Frances are twins, together forming part of a unit.At least that's the way Lizzie sees things. Lizzie is the twin who has everything - husband, children, a flourishing career, and a beautiful house. She worries about Frances, who seems to lead a solitary life in London ricocheting from one disastrous man to the next. Lizzie just wants Frances to share in her own complete and satisfying life.

Then Frances, suddenly and surprisingly, announces she isn't coming to Lizzie's for Christmas.She's going to Spain.Lizzie's world began to tilt. Frances's Christmas defection seems overwhelmingly threatening to their unity.

As Frances's future begins to change into something exciting and unexpected, and Lizzie's deteriorates as financial pressures eat into her ideal lifestyle, could it be that Frances is the twin with everything?

'Her novels, like family life itself, are built on the tensions between the illusions of permanence and the reality of charm' Observer

Lizzie and Frances, identical twins nearing forty, have hardly marked a parallel progress together through life. Lizzie is confident and effusive, the mother of a large, vibrant brood, a successful gallery owner, and a consummate homemaker. Frances, on the other hand, is as elusive as Lizzie is accessible: She lives alone, operates a modestly successful travel agency, and has never had a serious attachment to a man. It seems, to her loving family, as if Frances is destined to move through life anchorless.

But all that changes one Christmas when Frances makes an impulsive trip to Spain. There she falls in love—and not with just any man but with a wealthy, handsome Spaniard who is both Catholic and married. As Frances blossoms with newfound independence and relishes her engrossing affair, Lizzie becomes detached from her home life, which ultimately threatens her marriage. Though Lizzie’s was once the enviable life, now Frances has come into her own, and the twins must reexamine their roles—in their individual lives and in the special, shared world of sisterhood.
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