The 1991 Whitbread Award winner, by the English author of Crusoe's
Daughter (1986), etc., sardonically traces the steady fall (or is
it rise?) into madness of a suburban wife with too little to do and
too many horrors to shut out of her mind. The neighbors have always
considered Eliza Peabody eccentric, with with her loudly voiced
opinions, fearless stride, and the pious, admonishing notes she
distributes for their enlightenment and edification. But when one
of those notes - to Joan, across the street - incites that elusive
woman to abandon her family for far more exotic locales, Eliza
seems really to go off the deep end. Her blizzard of follow-up
notes to Joan, which comprise all of Gardam's story, first rush to
apologize for her forwardness, then capably detail Eliza's efforts
to care for Joan's gloomy husband as they wait for the prodigal
wife's return. Eliza envies Joan's courage and adventurousness,
being herself a well-educated but rather stodgy woman whose life as
the childless spouse of a Foreign Office official has petered out
into mindless rounds of volunteer work and shopping. Her notes
explore the secrets of the suburb's other residents while
resolutely ignoring the fact that Eliza's husband has eloped with
Joan's, that Joan's unmarried, college-aged daughter has gotten
pregnant, and that Eliza herself, in her terrible loneliness, has
begun to neglect her garden, her home, and herself. Eliza may be
going insane - her neighbors have begun to treat her with the wary
kindness one reserves for the near-psychotic - but at least she's
lost her self-righteous edge. As her letters move from stilted
lectures to multiple-paged flights of glorious fancy, the roots of
her misery begin to emerge, until all her inventions seem a
perfectly rational response to the events that prefaced her
destruction. A loony, funny tale - and an author with a refreshing
take on the familiar. (Kirkus Reviews)
Eliza Peabody is one of those dangerously blameless women who
believe they have God in their pocket. She is a modern-day Florence
Nightingale, always up at the Hospice or the Wives' club; she is
too enthusiastic; she talks too much. Her concern for the welfare
of her wealthy south London neighbours even extends to ingenuous,
well-meaning notes of unsolicited advice under the door. It is just
such a one-sided correspondence that heralds Eliza's undoing. Did
her letter have something to do with Joan's abrupt disappearance
from number forty-one? What to make of the long absences of her
husband and Joan's, and of the two men's new, inseparable
friendship? And why will no one else on Rathbone Road speak of
Joan? As Eliza's own life seems to disintegrate, she finds that,
despite the pity and embarrassment with which her neighbours greet
her, she is at last being drawn into their lives - although not in
the way she had once fantasised about. This is a sharp, poignant
and wickedly funny tale of love, heartache and disillusionment.
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