Someone Else

255 pp. "Someone Else is a novel about a delicate and unexplored subject - bereavement. With sharp insight and understanding, Gillian Tindall creates from the tragedy of unexpected death an anguished, yet tender study of a young woman's struggle not merely to endure life and its blow but to regain a quality of living. Joanna Roux is creative, talented, independent. Her seven-year-long marriage to Loic, a successful writer on the verge of real recognition, has fulfilled her. She enjoys their pattern of life - her closeness to her husband, their home, his encouragement of her career, their circle of friends, their country weekends, their style of entertaining. And she deeply loves her year-old son, George. At twenty-nine Joanna is a satisfied woman. Suddenly an everyday event, a car crash, destroys that family life. The author's psychological penetration into the nature of grief and the surprising processes that occur as the human psyche heal itself gives the novel a profoundly moving effect. Again this widely admired writer has produced a superb story enriched by a fine intelligence and a serious purpose."