Lysander`s Legs

Jane Myles is a passionate writer and movie buff. Her son is a lifeguard trainer and is on the crew of the Padstow lifeboat. Her daughter Sophia is a well-known film actress. She is retired and living the dream in a Cornish seaside village.

This is a book for anyone who has ever been young and unsuccessfully in love, i.e. most of the world's inhabitants. Julia, the book's heroine, combines wit and intelligence with an agonizing, and all too recognizable, emotional naivety which makes us cry and laugh by turns in recognition. How many of us have, at some time, listened to a friend's rhapsodic account of a burgeoning love affair, knowing even as the words are spoken, that it is all going to end in tears? One squirms for both the hero and the heroine, as we watch them fall in love with the wrong people. But, before it sounds too harrowing, there is plenty of light relief with Jane Myles's genuine laugh-out-loud set pieces. I loved it. -- Julian Fellowes