Artistic Licence (Charnwood Library) - Hardcover

Fforde, Katie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0708993567 ISBN 13: 9780708993569

Publisher: Charnwood (Large Print), 2002

Synopsis

Thea, fed up with being mother to a houseful of students, accepts her bossy friend Molly's offer of an art appreciation holiday in Provence. While there, Thea meets the gorgeous Rory, an artist who is as attracted to her as she is to him, in spite of him being several years younger. So when Thea hears that her student lodgers have had a party and her house is a tip, she decides to extend her holiday and accept Rory's invitation to his house in Ireland. But Molly, her annoying niece Petal, not to mention their enigmatic cousin Ben and his son Toby, all appear on the doorstep, just as Rory's dog is about to have puppies...

About this title

Review

Thea, the heroine of Katie Fforde's Artistic Licence, is a disorganised 35-year-old whose life is going nowhere. Or that is how it appears to her student lodgers--whom she unwittingly mothers--and to her older friend Molly, a lady of leisure with a missed vocation as a chief executive. When Thea jets off to Ireland on a whim to stay with the devastatingly good-looking artist Rory, all her friends from her new hometown of Cheltenham are appalled. Equally, when Thea, on seeing Rory's heart-wrenchingly beautiful landscape paintings, decides to set up an art gallery in provincial west of England, her friends cannot believe what they are hearing.

Katie Fforde makes clear that Thea knows what she's doing, and that her chaotic and messy lifestyle is her own conscious choice. Her determined resistance to the persistent Irish charmer Rory--he's too young, she doesn't have casual affairs--and the apparent ambivalence of Ben, a divorced and know-it-all artistic director of an ad agency, sets up a plot where the embryonic art gallery and Thea's accompanying search for a more satisfying life form centre stage, making any love interest incidental. Olivia Dickinson

Review

"Can be scoffed at one sitting ... Tasty" (Cosmopolitan)

"Joanna Trollope crossed with Tom Sharpe" (Mail on Sunday)

"The romance fizzes along with good humour and is a good, fat, summery read" (Sunday Mirror)

Edition details

• Publisher: Charnwood (Large Print)
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0708993567
• ISBN 13: 9780708993569
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 392