Together and Apart

Mar 11, 2026 1:01 AM

Author:Margaret Kennedy

Together and Apart

Betsy Canning is dissatisfied with life. She has always taken pains to be healthy, popular and well-treated, but despite her wealth, her comfortable homes and beautiful children, happiness eludes her. The problem must lie, she thinks, in her marriage to Alec, and a neat, civilised divorce seems the perfect solution.

But talk of divorce sparks interference from family and friends, and soon public opinion tears into the fragile fabric of family life and private desire. Alec and Betsy's marriage will not be the only casualty, and in this newly complicated world, happiness is more elusive than ever.

Reviews

Together and Apart is a quietly accomplished novel that catches the rustle of an era not so very far from our own

—— Washington Post

She is not only a romantic but an anarchist, and she knows the ways of men and women very well indeed

—— Anita Brookner

The intricate counterpoint between the life demanded by their peers and their own desires is exquisitely diagrammed

—— Washington Post

Kennedy was immensely popular in her heyday

—— Washington Post

A rhapsodic work... Intricate and inventive

—— New Yorker

A complex, wonderfully alive and imaginative story...glittering

—— Daily Telegraph

Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon grips as a novel of extraordinary truth, wisdom and humour

—— Auberon Waugh , Evening Standard

The language of Morrison's third novel astounds from its first pages to its triumphant conclusion... an epic of the African-American experience

—— Abdulrazak Gurnah , Week

Toni Morrison has written a brilliant prose tale that surveys nearly a century of American history as it impinges on a single family

—— New York Times Book Review

Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon grips as a novel of extraordinary truth, wisdom and humour

—— Sunday Telegraph

A stunning novel that's steeped in black history

—— Marc Chacksfield , ShortList

A mind-blowing political statement, an anguished cry of despair . . . a bomshell

—— The Weekly Review

The definitive African book of the twentieth century.

—— Moses Isegawa, author of Abyssinian Chronicles and Snakepit

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