Sleeping Arrangements

I am happy to have discovered British author Madeleine Wickham. She provides not only an entertaining story but thoughtful characters and an unpredictable plot.

In this book she brings together two couples who do not at first realize they have connections in both the past and the present that could change their lives. We soon learn that the first connection is an old love affair but the second remains undetected for most of the book.Hugh and Amanda, Chloe and Gerard have very distinct and unlike personalities, all interesting, none a stereotype. Jenna, the nanny, is perhaps the most entertaining of all, with her acute perceptions of all that is going on and the jolting contrast between youth and adult cultures. Even the children are of interest, four very unique young persons. There is also a mildly diabolical meddling acquaintance at work here who gets his just desserts in the end.

In THE GATECRASHER, Wickham depicts a beautiful woman,  Isabel, orphaned in a foreign land as a teenager, who has survived by going to funerals of the wives of wealthy men, luring the widowers into becoming her lovers, and eventually disappearing with a large chunk of cash off their Gold Cards.

I begin to recognize some character types…the naive boy-man who is educated by a wiser-than-her-years girl-woman, in both books the son of the male protagonist and here the daughter, Zara, of Isabel, who also convinces her mother to finally try staying with a good man who has plenty of money.