Trouble

Trouble follows the story of old college friends (and one-time college sweethearts) Richard and Mina – as they meet again at a London party, four years after he deserted his social circle to make a new life in the country with his sculptress wife, Diana. Tentatively, then with increasing passion, they begin a long-distance romance – one which threatens both Richard's hard-won idyll, and the home and family to which Mina has devoted herself. Moving, honest, and often unexpectedly funny, Trouble depicts in forensic detail the destructive effect of an intense affair on two likeable and recognisable couples on the cusp of their forties. Narrated by a slightly older and wiser Richard, the novel recalls his difficult year of living dangerously – together with the bliss, and the torment, of falling for someone you shouldn’t have fallen in love with... This accessible roller-coaster of a novel is an urgent update from deep inside the hearts and minds of modern men and women. Whether describing the landscape around Richard and Diana’s remote croft, or the pleasures and routine predicaments of adultery on his visits south, the dazzling prose of this assured debut expertly explores the hidden complexities and compulsions of contemporary lives. Trouble is literary fiction, which will have wide appeal with all those who enjoy novels about romance and relationships.