Balancing Act by Joanna Trollope
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Blurb: Susie Moran is a success. She has founded and run her own highly profitable company, and now her three daughters are all involved in the business. Rooted in the traditions of the Stoke-on-Trent potteries, and producing charming, useable objects of distinctive design, Susie is justly proud of her family and her achievement – and has no intention of letting it change. And then, into the mix, arrives Susie’s father, an ageing hippy who abandoned Susie as a baby. Now he’s alone, and wants to build bridges, although Susie’s daughters are outraged at the idea. Can the needs of a family business override the needs of the family itself? In wanting to preserve her business, will Susie lose something much more precious? (Doubleday, February 2014)
Katie Law, London’s Evening Standard
“Women going out to work while the men stay at home is the latest tricky topic Joanna Trollope tackles in this, her 18th novel. The backdrop, I suspect to make it palatable to her largely Aga saga-loving fan base, is a matriarchal family-run pottery business: think Emma Bridgewater with a spot of Cath Kidston.”
Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times
“Trollope is an extremely assured writer, with a brilliant eye for detail and a finely tuned emotional intelligence, but she does tend to spell things out. She will show us a development, in scenes and dialogue that feel authentic, and then she will tell us what has happened. She tends to repeat things, too.”
Wendy Holden, The Daily Mail
“I never really got into the story … Perhaps it’s the setting – a pottery factory in Stoke – all that liquid clay slip and pinched spouts. Also, it’s difficult to read a line like ‘You’re going to Stoke, Susie, because you want to. Aren’t you?’ without laughing. And I live in the Midlands, so I can say that.”
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