Author:Danielle Steel

For fourteen years, Steve and Meredith Whitman have sustained a marriage of passion and friendship, despite the demands of two all-consuming careers. Meredith is a top investment banker, Steve a gifted physician - the only thing missing in their life is children. Steve longs for them. But Meredith keeps putting off motherhood, and now she has been offered an extraordinary job opportunity in San Francisco, three thousand miles away. Steve urges her to accept, saying that he's more than happy to uproot himself and will join her as soon as he can find a new job himself. Perhaps in California, he hopes, they can begin a family at last.
Neither Steve nor Meredith had reckoned on a prolonged separation, but Steve's job keeps him in New York for months longer than planned. Weekends together fall prey to their hectic schedules. Alone in San Francisco, Meredith is spending long hours at the office with her boss, charismatic entrepreneur Callan Dow. Steve is working late shifts at the hospital, grabbing an occasional dinner with a new female colleague. Almost unnoticed, Steve and Meredith have begun living separate lives, and irresistible forces start to tear their lives and hearts apart.
A beautifully written, profoundly moving, observantly funny, deeply English novel by one of the most talented prose writers I have read in years
—— Carol Ann Duffy , Daily TelegraphMercurial, deft and wondrous in its sentences and uncanny descriptions...A considerable achievement by a daring writer who's come fully into her own
—— Richard FordKitty Aldridge's language captures the casual brutality of childhood like a butterfly in a net
—— Independent[An] excellent pastoral novel
—— Laura Macauley , Time OutAldridge herself loads the novel with verbal twists and turns that leave its texture as ridged, layered and undulating as the Chilterns themselves
—— Boyd Tonkin , Independent[The] carefully observed, spirited portraits form much of the considerable charm of this powerful, slow-burning second novel
—— Sunday TelegraphUtterly riveting, brilliant
—— CloserA funny, easy-going, heart-warming read
—— WomanTouching and funny
—— CloserA real talent ... Sinéad Moriarty has a gift at unwrapping a good, plausible tale and creating likeable characters that you care about
—— IRISH INDEPENDENTA good story, flourishing characters, and the most persuasive narrative voice
—— GuardianA classic tale of the triumph of youthful naivety over middle-aged cynicism
—— Good Book GuideClassic coming of age novel
—— Oxford Times