This is a deceptive little tale. Starts out quite straightforwardly at a sales team-meting in Majorca, where up-and-coming rep Joanna Meakin finds herself in bed with a company executive. What seems like a brief lapse into adultery develops into a full-blown affair back in England, and leaves Joanna living a double-life, as she discovers that ‘nothing consumes the soul like infidelity to a loved one’. So far, so unexceptional. It’s only when the guilt drives Joanna into the arms of the church, where she meets a New Age-ish teacher named Hilary, that you start feeling that we’re headed in some odd directions here.

Before long Hilary is explaining that Joanna’s problems are to do not so much with sexual restlessness as with the sickness that lies at the heart of our society:

’People have never had so little to do. We don’t have to catch our food, or kill it. We’re barely involved in cooking it. We have transport. Machines for everything. And still no one has any time. Now, surely that’s wrong. Clearly we aren’t so busy because of necessity, so it must be greed. Greed for material rewards, all sorts of pleasure. Or fear. We’re too anxious. No one believes they will be provided for. And so in the rush for possessions and position, we hurt each other. We break promises.’ (p.119)

Under Hilary's influence, Joanna gradually begins to overcome her obsession with career advancement, turning instead to a pursuit of spiritual discovery. Which frankly ain’t going to help her marriage any, but does her a power of good.

At the outset you felt like you’re in for the now-standard theme of modern woman’s conflict between work and home – Joanna has no time for children, for example, despite her husband’s wish to have a family – but by halfway through, you’re realizing that Ms France has pulled an impressive stroke. Avoiding impalement on either horn of the dilemma, Joanna aims straight between them and finds hope in a world populated by monks and mystics.

Except that there’s still more going on. Joanna’s husband is a photographer who had earlier discovered and married a Jordan-esque woman who went on to enjoy massive celebrity status as the possessor of the Best Boobs in Britain. It’s a nice little side-angle that allows for a bit of light satire on the media and sets up the final act, where Joanna and Hilary get caught up in the sleazy world of the tabloids.

It’s all sounding a bit messy as I describe it, but trust me, it’s not. It actually hangs together pretty damn well, and the way that Joanna’s life spirals out so wildly as a consequence of that initial drunken encounter is very cleanly done. Essentially it’s a study of a woman trying to make some sense of how she fits into a society that’s inherently unbalanced, and it’s not dissimilar to something one might expect from Gillian Freeman (the publishers claim Joanna Trollope, but I think my comparison’s more flattering). Above all, it’s really very compulsive stuff: you find yourself getting sucked into it without quite realizing what’s happening.

You may have noticed that this is a dangerously modern publication by the standards of this site, so I’d better explain that it was sent to me as a review copy. This is the first time such a thing has happened (all such offers happily considered) and perhaps reflects the crap state of publishing in Britain, where an independent publishing house dealing in quality, middle-brow work for grown-ups struggles to get reviews in the fashion-conscious, back-scratching world of the mainstream media. For that reason alone, I’d be inclined to urge you to support Outpress. Fortunately, there’s an even better reason: this is a very good book, thought-provoking and shot through with genuine insight, and it’s well worth reading.

Available through their website, as shown below.