Friday Nights - Tapa dura

'Joanna has held up a mirror to millions of women around the world, and they've seen themselves, their lives, their relationships and their desires staring back.' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING 'Trollope is a slick and stylish writer.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'She writes so beautifully ... in a style so graceful and judicious that you would call it restful if it were not also palpably intelligent.' EVENING STANDARD 'As subtle as Austen, as sharp as Bronte, Trollope's brilliant!' Fay Weldon, MAIL ON SUNDAY

It's Eleanor who starts the Friday nights. From her window she sees two young women, with small children, separate, struggling and plainly lonely, and decides to ask them in, and see what happens. What happens is that a group gradually forms, a group of six different and disparate women, who become a circle of friends. They range in age from Jules, who is twenty-two and wants to be a DJ, to Eleanor herself, who is a retired professional and walks with a stick. They include one wife, three mothers, three singletons and five working women. They all of them, variously, value Friday nights. And then one of them meets a man - an enigmatic significant man - and the whole dynamic changes. The bonds that have been so closely forged are tested - and some of them break. With wit and warmth, Joanna Trollope explores the complexities, the sabotages, and the shifting currents of modern friendship.