The Art of Unpacking Your Life - Softcover

Jilla, Shireen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 144821520X ISBN 13: 9781448215201

Publisher: Bloomsbury Reader, 2015

Synopsis

Old Friends, New Lies
Twenty years ago, they were the best of friends. When Connie invites her university gang on the holiday of a lifetime, a safari in the Kalahari, they have little in common anymore. Is getting them back together a terrible mistake?

Connie is lonely. With her children at secondary school and an ambitious Mp husband, who is regularly adulterous, she is searching for her own purpose in life. She feels insecure next to Sara, a driven, defiantly single barrister, and has conflicted feelings towards her old flame, the freshly-divorced Luke, whose own secrets threaten to overwhelm him.

Despite the undercurrent of tension, they are drawn into the adventure and begin to enjoy each other once more, a million miles away from their daily concerns. They finally have space to explore what really matters to them. But a series of events and revelations bring new challenges to the group.

Conservative lawyer Matt doubtfully confides he is having a surrogate baby; Sara questions her own professionalism as her latest murder trial comes under scrutiny; Daniel discovers his yearning to buy land and put down roots, which his partner Alan does not share, and Lizzie struggles with feelings of jealousy that are closer to home than is comfortable for anyone.

As their lives start to unravel, they see how they are all linked together. New relationships are formed, old ones run their course, and more news from home brings further tragedy.

Can the stark beauty and calm of the Kalahari help them rediscover the friendship that binds them together? Will they all make it back to London in one piece?

About this title

Review

The Art of Unpacking Your Life is everything women's fiction should be. Well-paced, beautifully rhythmic, deeply familiar and relevant, amid a magical backdrop. (Meditating Mummy)

The lush descriptions of Africa are lovely, and the story absorbing and thoughtful, with more than one twist in the tail. (Wendy Holden Daily Mail 2015-04-09)

Jilla is a sharp and often funny interpreter of modern life and morality. (Patricia Nicol The Times 2015-04-19)

Book Description

A contemporary take on The Big Chill. A group of university friends gather to celebrate a 40th birthday on holiday in the Kalahari and grapple with the changes the intervening years have made on their lives.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Reader
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 144821520X
• ISBN 13: 9781448215201
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 316