Love Songs and Lies

A story about coming of age in 1970s Oxford. Politics and the Pill. Pot and poetry. Glamrock and groupies. The way we were. Love isn''t always the answer.

Have you ever fallen for the wrong man?

Sally does. Handsome, clever Max Bellinger brings a whiff of sophistication into the shabby canalside house they share in that final year at Oxford. And Sally, so steeped in the Romantics that she confuses literature with real life, is content to be his adoring handmaiden.

That blind devotion shapes Sally''s life for many years. She writes lyrics for Max''s wayward rock star brother and stays involved with his family. But the relationship is based on secrets and lies, and when Sally finally wakes up to reality, those deceptions come home to roost . . .

Libby Purves perfectly capture what it means to be a woman in the last third of the twentieth century.