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If Not Now ...
If Not Now ...
Jul 15, 2025 1:09 AM

Author:Denyse Devlin

If Not Now ...

Just when she has resigned herself to being alone long-term, Marina Ffench, a widow in her forties, meets a man and falls in love all over again. A mid-life relationship, she thinks, will be straightforward - kids reared, careers established, mortgages almost paid off . . .

However, mid-life passion carries excess baggage. Luke, her man, may have a gorgeous villa on the Italian Lakes, but he also has a pious and eccentric Irish mammy, an Italian ex-lover who is as invasive as dry rot, and a son embroiled in a suspect engagement. And Marina has to admit that her own life is just as complicated - and getting more so by the day, given the number of stray souls and ghosts from the past that are turning up in her Cork home.

Gradually, she and Luke come to see that love second time around is hard work. But in their efforts to find a happy ending for everyone, unwittingly they are creating a disaster that may destroy their shared future and the happiness of both families . . .

Reviews

A profoundly contemporary story about civil wars, unstable countries and refugees pouring to the cities of the West... beautifully written, with the ghost of Camus hovering at the edge of the frame

—— New Statesman

For as long as I'm immersed in a P.G. Wodehouse book, it's possible to keep the real world at bay and live in a far, far nicer, funnier one where happy endings are the order of the day

—— Marian Keyes

Wodehouse always lifts your spirits, no matter how high they happen to be already

—— Lynne Truss

The incomparable and timeless genius - perfect for readers of all ages, shapes and sizes!

—— Kate Mosse

Not only the funniest English novelist who ever wrote but one of our finest stylists

—— Susan Hill

P.G. Wodehouse remains the greatest chronicler of a certain kind of Englishness, that no one else has ever captured quite so sharply, or with quite as much wit and affection

—— Julian Fellowes

A genius ... Elusive, delicate but lasting

—— Alan Ayckbourn

P.G. Wodehouse is the gold standard of English wit

—— Christopher Hitchens

To dive into a Wodehouse novel is to swim in some of the most elegantly turned phrases in the English language

—— Ben Schott

Wodehouse is so utterly, properly, simply funny

—— Adele Parks

I've recorded all the Jeeves books, and I can tell you this: it's like singing Mozart. The perfection of the phrasing is a physical pleasure. I doubt if any writer in the English language has more perfect music

—— Simon Callow

Wodehouse was quite simply the Bee's Knees. And then some

—— Joseph Connolly

I constantly find myself drooling with admiration at the sublime way Wodehouse plays with the English language

—— Simon Brett

Quite simply, the master of comic writing at work

—— Jane Moore

To pick up a Wodehouse novel is to find oneself in the presence of genius - no writer has ever given me so much pure enjoyment

—— John Julius Norwich

Compulsory reading for anyone who has a pig, an aunt - or a sense of humour!

—— Lindsey Davis

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

—— Kathy Lette

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

—— Arabella Weir

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

—— Hugh Laurie

The greatest comic writer ever

—— Douglas Adams

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

—— Sebastian Faulks

Sublime comic genius

—— Ben Elton
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