Artistic Licence - Hardcover

Fforde, Katie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0712669728 ISBN 13: 9780712669726

Publisher: Century, 2001

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, where she discovers a studio full of wonderful paintings. But her home life won't leave her alone. 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. And then everyone is roped into helping when Thea decides to open an art gallery to show Rory's work. But will she end up with Rory, who wants her, or with Ben, who maddeningly, doesn't seem to?

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

"Joanna Trollope crossed with Tom Sharpe." -"Mail on Sunday" Joanna Trollope crossed with Tom Sharpe. "Mail on Sunday""

Edition details

• Publisher: Century
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0712669728
• ISBN 13: 9780712669726
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 320