Girl from the South - Hardcover

Author of eagerly awaited and sparklingly readable novels often centred around the domestic nuances and dilemmas of life in contemporary England, Joanna Trollope is also the author of a number of historical novels and of BRITANNIA'S DAUGHTERS, a study of women in the British Empire. In 1988 she wrote her first contemporary novel, THE CHOIR, and this was followed by A VILLAGE AFFAIR, A PASSIONATE MAN, THE RECTOR'S WIFE, THE MEN AND THE GIRLS, A SPANISH LOVER, THE BEST OF FRIENDS, NEXT OF KIN, OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN and, most recently, MARRYING THE MISTRESS. She lives in Gloucestershire. Reader: Emilia Fox

An admired English author of wryly intelligent family dramas, Trollope has never enjoyed a particularly wide American readership. This very likable novel, which features a protagonist from South Carolina involved with an English visitor, might change that. It even offers the notion that American family traditions, particularly Southern ones, offer a stability that contemporary English relationships often lack. Gillon Stokes is the odd girl out in her tradition-bound Charleston family, and when she goes to London on a typically whimsical impulse to pursue art research, she catches the eye of nature photographer Henry. When she casually invites him back home for a visit, Henry is charmed by the same folkways that Gillon finds so stifling, and he soon becomes so much part of her family that he begins turning their sense of themselves and each other upside down. Back in London, Henry's girlfriend, Tilly, is having problems keeping his friend William at bay, and discovers that she cares more than she expected she would about Henry's defection. The contrast between the casual, rootless Londoners and the rather rigid, assured Southerners is deliciously pointed, and Trollope (The Best of Friends, etc.) offers two splendid scenes of very different mothers and daughters coming to terms with their dissimilarities. This is subtle, delicate entertainment that skillfully avoids romantic clich‚ while offering a group of believably quirky characters learning to adjust to new maturity. National advertising.
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