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Aug 16, 2025 7:38 AM

Author:Isabel Fonseca

Attachment

After more than twenty years together, Jean and Mark revel in a sabbatical on a remote tropical island. Life seems idyllic. Until, that is, Jean opens a salacious love-letter addressed to Mark. Looking for answers she goes undercover with a surreptitious correspondence that propels her on to alarming and illuminating adventures of her own...

Reviews

Just thinking of this novel, I smile... so gratifyingly readable. When it comes to deciphering our new world and its emotional intricacies, Fonseca is spot-on

—— Fay Weldon

A searing tale of middle-aged anxiety, so accomplished and pertinent, witty and wise

—— Independent on Sunday

Fonseca possesses a wonderful eye and vocabulary for the observable world, a natural gift for portraiture and a nasty wit about characters we're not supposed to like... All is perfectly suited to her complex subject, one worth taking seriously: the difficulty of loving someone you already love, and its corollary, the stony impenetrability of others

—— Richard Ford

An impressive debut...it is insistent, weighty, carefully and densely composed....this is an adult book in all respects, reflecting, with an inquiring intelligence and emotional honesty

—— Time Out

She has an expressive turn of phrase and a gift for evoking a sense of place

—— Sunday Times

Attachment faces the uncomfortable subject of female ageing with wry, disabused humour...read her book on its own feminist terms'

—— The Times

Fonseca's prose is fluent, confident and often funny ... she has a gift for satire that glimmers through this novel. And a near-perfect ear for nuances of speech. Attachment is ferociously well observed. Both physiologically and socially ... as a first novel, the signs of greater things are clearly there

—— Guardian

Fonseca's voice - poised, particular, exotic - rises above her plot

—— Observer

Her prose is elegant and wry

—— Daily Telegraph

Fonseca's talent lies in describing the texture of daily life: the mango with a 'skin like sunset', the pizza boxes that open 'like laptops' ... she is good on the sweep of history and the cultural climate of previous times ... telling details of character - particularly the male characters, are captured well

—— New Statesman

Isabel Fonseca's slinkily assured debut novel shows a wry appreciation of the complexities of modern love...a novel that presumes to put a woman's mid-life crisis - sexual, spiritual and intellectual - centre stage

—— Emma Hagestadt , Independent

Involving novel

—— Observer

this smart, clammy drama, manages to be both unsettling and touching

—— Guardian

Fabulous and very clever

—— Marilla Frostrup , Psychologies

A witty exploration of the preoccupations of middle age - sex, serious illness, the death of a parent - its main attraction being the voice, at once tough, funny and lonely, of the inimitable Jean.

—— Arminta Wallace , Irish Times

Fonesca's debut novel is a funny, heart rendering account of the virtues of love and desire, confounded against the everyday.

—— www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

Beautifully written

—— Image Magazine

It is expertly written in its way, and oddly compelling - like a slushy movie you can't help but respond to

—— Guardian

Moving and thoughtful ... Poignant and compelling, this lyrical novel lifts the veil on an internal world of love, rivalry and misunderstanding; an intricate depiction of sibling relationships

—— Good Book Guide

A beautifully evocative and intelligent novel

—— Woman & Home

This impassioned tale is a gripping read

—— James Smart , The Guardian

Jones is fabulous...offering titbits of danger and discord, yet keeping a cool matter-of-fact tone for the big horrors

—— Sunday Times

Her second novel is a must-read; a devastating, brilliant account of what happens when everything a man believes in...begins to crumble

—— Cath Kidson Magazine

Full of danger and discord

—— Sunday Times Summer Reading
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