Friday Nights : a novel
/ Joanna Trollope
- New York : Bloomsbury , 2008
- 334 p. ; 21 cm
Watercolor techniques for painting the effects of light and atmosphere
It is Eleanor who starts the Friday night get-togethers. From her window she sees two young women, with small children, separate, struggling, and plainly lonely - and decides to ask them in. What began as a lark soon becomes a ritual, and the circle widens to include six very different women. They range in age from Jules, who is twenty-two and wants to be a DJ, to Eleanor herself, a retired professional who walks with a stick. They include one wife, three mothers, three singles, and five working women. All of them, variously, value Friday nights. Until one of them meets a man - an enigmatic, significant man - and the whole dynamic changes. The bonds that have been so closely forged are tested - and some of them break.