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Alexandra Ludd is a successful stage actress who is performing in Ibsen's A Doll's House when her husband, Ned, a theater critic, dies in their country house. Alexandra takes a leave of absence from the London production, only to find that her friends in the country all seem to be engaged in some kind of cover-up regarding the circumstances of Ned's death. It gradually becomes clear to Alexandra that her husband lived a very different and more promiscuous life than she'd ever suspected.

As always, Weldon's fast-paced black comedy is as compulsively readable as it is unpleasant, but Alexandra's utter failure to have perceived any hint of her husband's real nature makes her remarkably unobservant, and her treatment of their son, Sascha, makes her seem outright cold-blooded, while those around her are malicious and spiteful to the point of sadism.

I was torn with the rating to give this book. In terms of good writing, portraying characters well and moving the plot of at a good pace, it would score a 7 or 8. in terms of how much I enjoyed it, more a 3 or 4. But that was more about the nature of the story and how much it bothered me about the level of deceit Weldon reveals. Rather a depressing read.

The plot reminded me to a small extent of Shreve's 'The Pilot's Wife' (husband dies, wife finds out about a whole other life he has been living), but whilst the characters in Shreve are sympathetic and you can imagine the dead husband loving both families, the characters in this book are almost without exception completely unlikeable. Malicious and spiteful are both good words to sum up this book.

Left on the bookswap shelf outside the postgrad library