Home
/
Fiction
/
Wives and Daughters
Wives and Daughters
Aug 7, 2025 6:51 AM

Author:Elizabeth Gaskell,Pam Morris,Pam Morris,Pam Morris

Wives and Daughters

Seventeen-year-old Molly Gibson worships her widowed father. But when he decides to remarry, Molly's life is thrown off course by the arrival of her vain, shallow and selfish stepmother. There is some solace in the shape of her new stepsister Cynthia, who is beautiful, sophisticated and irresistible to every man she meets. Soon the girls become close, and Molly finds herself cajoled into becoming a go-between in Cynthia's love affairs. But in doing so, Molly risks ruining her reputation in the gossiping village of Hollingford - and jeopardizing everything with the man she is secretly in love with.

Reviews

An amazing, hilarious and unfalteringly entertaining account of a man trapped in a kind of Catch 23

—— Sunday Times

Takes you by the shoulders and shakes you until your teeth rattle

—— The Times

Cunningly, relentlessly jokey and sad

—— Observer

One of the funniest books ever written

—— Uncut

Amazing, hilarious and unfalteringly entertaining

—— Sunday Times

Humour, wisdom and the elegance of simplicity come at you in equal measure

—— Bizarre

A laureate of American low life

—— Time

Cunning, relentlessly jokey and sad

—— Observer

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

The greatest comic writer ever

—— Douglas Adams

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 funniest writer ever to put words to paper

—— Hugh Laurie

P.G. Wodehouse should be prescribed to treat depression. Cheaper, more effective than valium and far, far more addictive

—— Olivia Williams

My only problem with Wodehouse is deciding which of his enchanting books to take to my desert island

—— Ruth Dudley Edwards

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

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

—— Sebastian Faulks

Sublime comic genius

—— Ben Elton

Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in

—— Evelyn Waugh
Comments
Welcome to zzdbook comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.zzdbook.com All Rights Reserved