Westwood captures the heart, right from its opening pages… as an account of what it was like to be an ordinary young woman in wartime London - no stockings, no chocolate, no men - it can hardly be bettered. How did it, I wonder, evade fresh new soft covers for so long?

A wartime masterpiece

Stella Gibbons is the Jane Austen of the 20th century

Gibbons was an acute and witty observer, and her dissection of the British class system is spot-on

You show up a group of characters, all of whom are discontented and unhappy. Yet the feeling that comes through very powerfully is that life is wonderful, in spite of individual bitterness and frustration.

A poignant tale about a mother watching her children grow up and marry, and her sadness as they drift further away. Joanna's descriptive writing expresses true wrought emotion and hurt

The author's psychology, as always, is sound, the plotting secure and the pacing brisk and page-turning. Another winner

Sociologically and psychologically as observant as ever

Book of the Month: An intuitive and sympathetically observed piece of writing

Trollope writes with customary compassion and humanity in this heartwarming and engaging novel

A very superior work of women's fiction... an exceedingly skilled analysis of the relationship between different generations of women and how the power shifts as the old, as they must, get old and the young move on... it is a story told beautifully

The legendary Ms Trollope triumphs yet again, with her latest slick of classy chick-lit

This thoroughly engaging, intelligent, literate novel

The brilliantly observed portrayal of family life is wonderfully compelling - and a story many will be able to identify with. ****

Incisive, smart and at times darkly funny

Astonishingly powerful

Brilliantly observed