Legerdemain

Legerdemain is a new novel by Anne Wodehouse, the distant cousin to P. G. Wodehouse.

It's a romantic novel set in the rural Midlands back in the early 1970s.

A typically urban couple decide that they want to live the good life. For this, surely, will be the answer to the many problems of their lives?

When they arrive in their rural idyl, to live in a derelict farmhouse, they realised that perhaps things are not going to be as idyllic as they had hoped or thought?

As the wheels fall off their metaphorical hay cart, they meet some of the rather flamboyant local residents and realise that running away from your problems is never a good solution as they can all run very quickly after you.

It is a story of relationships that flounder and eventually fall to bits, of new relationships that suddenly pop up and become something more than they might have been, and all set against a backdrop of people weird, wonderful and, when you come down to it, just all very, very human folks, with all the faults and foibles that usually entails.

There's James, who drinks far too much and has a different lie and excuse as to why he drinks to excess to match every drink he takes.

There's his wife, Sarah who is sickened and utterly defeated by what her husband has become and their two children, too.

James will remain in the city in a flat, whilst Sarah and the children will live in a self-sufficient smallholding in the country.

There are marriages, deaths and the hope of unexpected new beginnings both in the city and out of the city.

Legerdemain is published by the Book Guild at £9,99, in paperback.

Legerdemain is ideal to be packed for your summer holidays and you can buy it at the That's Books and Entertainment bookshop, just to the right hand side of this review.