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Loving Harry — Joan Fallon
In this absorbing family drama, we follow the extraordinary reversal of fortunes of two very different women who are connected by their love for the same deeply flawed man.
Fashion designer Margery Kane has been too busy climbing the career ladder to sustain a long-term relationship - until she meets the charming, charismatic Harry Wilkinson, and falls deeply in love for the first time. There's only one problem: Harry is already married to Barbara, a stay-at-home wife who's been content until now to devote all her energies to looking after her husband and children. The close-knit Wilkinson family unit is blown apart when Harry leaves Barbara, deserting the family home to start a new life in Spain with Margery.
We follow the fortunes of the two women over the next two decades, as a devastated Barbara eventually manages to pick up the pieces of her life, developing strengths she never knew she possessed, learning to cope as the head of a single-parent family, starting a successful chutney-making business and finally finding new love. Margery on the other hand, while successfully re-launching her fashion career in Spain, has to watch helplessly as Harry fails to kick-start his own business, gradually descending into apathy and alcoholism, while Margery is unable to conceive the child she longs for.
Finally, the two women meet at Harry's funeral (which forms the opening scene of the novel) and the bitterness of the past spills over into the present. Initially, Margery is met with suspicion and rejection by Harry's extended family, and faces a costly legal battle to preserve her home. Harry's two children, Tom and Sylvia, have inherited the house in Spain and now decide, against their late father's wishes, to evict their stepmother. But it's not as simple as that: for, throughout their marriage, Harry and Barbara were keeping secrets from one another, and now that Margery has discovered the truth from an unexpected source, she has to decide whether to use this knowledge as a weapon to save her home, knowing the devastation it would cause, or whether to let the past lie.
Fashion designer Margery Kane has been too busy climbing the career ladder to sustain a long-term relationship - until she meets the charming, charismatic Harry Wilkinson, and falls deeply in love for the first time. There's only one problem: Harry is already married to Barbara, a stay-at-home wife who's been content until now to devote all her energies to looking after her husband and children. The close-knit Wilkinson family unit is blown apart when Harry leaves Barbara, deserting the family home to start a new life in Spain with Margery.
We follow the fortunes of the two women over the next two decades, as a devastated Barbara eventually manages to pick up the pieces of her life, developing strengths she never knew she possessed, learning to cope as the head of a single-parent family, starting a successful chutney-making business and finally finding new love. Margery on the other hand, while successfully re-launching her fashion career in Spain, has to watch helplessly as Harry fails to kick-start his own business, gradually descending into apathy and alcoholism, while Margery is unable to conceive the child she longs for.
Finally, the two women meet at Harry's funeral (which forms the opening scene of the novel) and the bitterness of the past spills over into the present. Initially, Margery is met with suspicion and rejection by Harry's extended family, and faces a costly legal battle to preserve her home. Harry's two children, Tom and Sylvia, have inherited the house in Spain and now decide, against their late father's wishes, to evict their stepmother. But it's not as simple as that: for, throughout their marriage, Harry and Barbara were keeping secrets from one another, and now that Margery has discovered the truth from an unexpected source, she has to decide whether to use this knowledge as a weapon to save her home, knowing the devastation it would cause, or whether to let the past lie.
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