You’ve been married for several years. Long enough, certainly, for the rosy glow of your first love to have faded, dulled by the routine and reality of everyday life – including, in your particular case, his vitriolic ex-wife and two cute but time-intensive stepsons.Then, one day, you meet him. The man of your dreams. (Or, at least, he will be from now on.) You weren’t expecting it, but you look at him, he looks at you, and it’s there: that spark of attraction, understanding, whatever you call it. (And certainly, you call it something different from your husband, when he finds out.)The real question, though, is not so much what you call it but what you do about it . . .'Brownrigg has perfect pitch, and she sees with amazing depth and tenderness into the hearts of her real-as-real characters – and into the reader's heart too' Michael Chabon‘In this slim, devastating novel, the marvelously talented Sylvia Brownrigg tells us more about the emotional politics of modern marriage – and divorce – than I can remember reading in a long time. It's a bulletin from the front lines: timely, true, and at its heart surprisingly tender’ Ann Packer

It is 1998. In the safe haven of her North London flat – in a room her husband has ironically dubbed the Delivery Room – Serbian therapist Mira Braverman listens to the stories of her troubled patients.As the novel unfolds, Mira discovers she is not as distant from their pain as she might once have been: her husband Peter struggles with illness, NATO’s threats against her country grow more serious, and submerged truths from her own past seem likely to erupt.‘The contrasts Brownrigg draws between war and peace, death and life, make you feel the preciousness of things that are easy to take for granted. If you spend time in her world, you find yourself in a place that is refreshingly attuned to the small things of life, the things that make it worth living’ Guardian‘Brownrigg’s ability to invent character is outstanding . . . This is a novel in which there is a satisfying sense of trespass and of comprehensive revelation, as Brownrigg ambitiously plaits the narratives of patients and therapist together. She would make an excellent, if rebellious, analyst herself’ Observer‘A stunning interpretation of birth, death, war and bereavement’ Scotland on Sunday‘Grippingly readable . . . An old-fashioned novel, one full of texture and detail, in which character and plot are patiently dissected and illuminated so that a larger picture might become apparent. In its ambition and commitment, The Delivery Room stands out as one of the most striking and pleasing novels so far this year’ TLS‘Both intensely intelligent and highly readable’ The Times

Pages for You is story of the beginning, blossoming and falling apart of a delirious love affair, by Sylvia Brownrigg.‘A love letter written for a lost lover . . . mesmerizing’ – Helen Dunmore, The TimesWhen Flannery Jansen arrives at university, she is totally unprepared for an encounter that will rock her existence. But when she comes across Anne Arden in a local diner, Flannery falls dramatically and desperately in love.Flannery is quickly embarrassed in the face of the older woman’s poise and sophistication, and under the gaze of those impossible green eyes, but slowly their paths intertwine, and soon Flannery becomes Anne’s eager student in life and love.

The Then WivesA husband remembers a party many years – and at least one wife – ago.A Dictionary of BetrayalEntries on the theme of love, loss, party etiquette and sleeping with other people’s partners.

Two women are reunited twenty years after the love affair that changed both their worlds. Sylvia Brownrigg's Pages for Her is a novel about love, memory and what it is to be a woman, a wife, and a mother.'A complex portrait of two women's sexuality . . . an absolute pleasure' – Alice SeboldFlannery, a writer with one well-known rather racy book to her name, is, by her own admission, in a situation she never thought she'd be: married to a man who overshadows her and defined by her primary relationships as wife and mother. When Flannery is invited to a writers' conference she sees a chance to return to a world she knew well. And then she recognizes the name of the chair of the event: Anne Arden. Suddenly Flannery is thrown back twenty years to her eighteen-year-old self and the most intense love affair of her entire life.On the other side of the world Anne is travelling for work. Recently out of a decades-long partnership, she feels adrift, unsettled. When a friend asks her to chair an event at a writers' conference she says yes and a couple of months later, on the same campus where they met and fell in love, Anne and Flannery are reunited. Though their lives have taken them in different and unexpected directions, the pull between them proves irresistible.

Two women are reunited twenty years after the love affair that changed both their worlds. Sylvia Brownrigg's Pages for Her is a novel about love, memory and what it is to be a woman, a wife, and a mother.'A complex portrait of two women's sexuality . . . an absolute pleasure' – Alice SeboldFlannery, a writer with one well-known rather racy book to her name, is, by her own admission, in a situation she never thought she'd be: married to a man who overshadows her and defined by her primary relationships as wife and mother. When Flannery is invited to a writers' conference she sees a chance to return to a world she knew well. And then she recognizes the name of the chair of the event: Anne Arden. Suddenly Flannery is thrown back twenty years to her eighteen-year-old self and the most intense love affair of her entire life.On the other side of the world Anne is travelling for work. Recently out of a decades-long partnership, she feels adrift, unsettled. When a friend asks her to chair an event at a writers' conference she says yes and a couple of months later, on the same campus where they met and fell in love, Anne and Flannery are reunited. Though their lives have taken them in different and unexpected directions, the pull between them proves irresistible.

Pages for You is story of the beginning, blossoming and falling apart of a delirious love affair, by Sylvia Brownrigg.‘A love letter written for a lost lover . . . mesmerizing’ – Helen Dunmore, The TimesWhen Flannery Jansen arrives at university, she is totally unprepared for an encounter that will rock her existence. But when she comes across Anne Arden in a local diner, Flannery falls dramatically and desperately in love.Flannery is quickly embarrassed in the face of the older woman’s poise and sophistication, and under the gaze of those impossible green eyes, but slowly their paths intertwine, and soon Flannery becomes Anne’s eager student in life and love.

Sylvia Brownrigg's “wise, intimate, and deliciously entertaining memoir" (Carol Edgarian) reconstructs a poignant story of fathers lost and foundWhen Sylvia Brownrigg received a package addressed to her father that had been lost for over fifty years, she wanted to deliver it to him before it was too late. She did not expect that her father, Nick, would choose not to open it. A few years later, she and her brother finally did.Nick, an absent father, was a would-be writer and back-to-the-lander who lived off the grid in Northern California. Nick’s own father, Gawen—also absent—had been a wellborn Englishman who wrote a Bloomsbury-like novel about lesbian lovers, before moving to Kenya and ultimately dying a mysterious death at age twenty-seven. Brownrigg was told Gawen had likely died by suicide.Reconstructing Gawen’s short, colorful life from revelations in the package takes her through glamorous 1930s London and staid Pasadena, toward the last gasp of the British Empire in Kenya, and from there, deep into the California redwoods, where Nick later carved out a rugged path in the wilderness, keeping his English past at bay. Vividly weaving together the lives of her father and grandfather, through memory and imagination, Brownrigg explores issues of sexuality and silences, and childhoods fractured by divorce. In her uncovering of this lost family, she writes movingly of daughterhood and of parenthood, gradually making her own story whole.

Sylvia Brownrigg's “wise, intimate, and deliciously entertaining memoir" (Carol Edgarian) reconstructs a poignant story of fathers lost and foundWhen Sylvia Brownrigg received a package addressed to her father that had been lost for over fifty years, she wanted to deliver it to him before it was too late. She did not expect that her father, Nick, would choose not to open it. A few years later, she and her brother finally did.Nick, an absent father, was a would-be writer and back-to-the-lander who lived off the grid in Northern California. Nick’s own father, Gawen—also absent—had been a wellborn Englishman who wrote a Bloomsbury-like novel about lesbian lovers, before moving to Kenya and ultimately dying a mysterious death at age twenty-seven. Brownrigg was told Gawen had likely died by suicide.Reconstructing Gawen’s short, colorful life from revelations in the package takes her through glamorous 1930s London and staid Pasadena, toward the last gasp of the British Empire in Kenya, and from there, deep into the California redwoods, where Nick later carved out a rugged path in the wilderness, keeping his English past at bay. Vividly weaving together the lives of her father and grandfather, through memory and imagination, Brownrigg explores issues of sexuality and silences, and childhoods fractured by divorce. In her uncovering of this lost family, she writes movingly of daughterhood and of parenthood, gradually making her own story whole.

You’ve been married for several years. Long enough, certainly, for the rosy glow of your first love to have faded, dulled by the routine and reality of everyday life – including, in your particular case, his vitriolic ex-wife and two cute but time-intensive stepsons.Then, one day, you meet him. The man of your dreams. (Or, at least, he will be from now on.) You weren’t expecting it, but you look at him, he looks at you, and it’s there: that spark of attraction, understanding, whatever you call it. (And certainly, you call it something different from your husband, when he finds out.)The real question, though, is not so much what you call it but what you do about it . . .'Brownrigg has perfect pitch, and she sees with amazing depth and tenderness into the hearts of her real-as-real characters – and into the reader's heart too' Michael Chabon‘In this slim, devastating novel, the marvelously talented Sylvia Brownrigg tells us more about the emotional politics of modern marriage – and divorce – than I can remember reading in a long time. It's a bulletin from the front lines: timely, true, and at its heart surprisingly tender’ Ann Packer

It is 1998. In the safe haven of her North London flat – in a room her husband has ironically dubbed the Delivery Room – Serbian therapist Mira Braverman listens to the stories of her troubled patients.As the novel unfolds, Mira discovers she is not as distant from their pain as she might once have been: her husband Peter struggles with illness, NATO’s threats against her country grow more serious, and submerged truths from her own past seem likely to erupt.‘The contrasts Brownrigg draws between war and peace, death and life, make you feel the preciousness of things that are easy to take for granted. If you spend time in her world, you find yourself in a place that is refreshingly attuned to the small things of life, the things that make it worth living’ Guardian‘Brownrigg’s ability to invent character is outstanding . . . This is a novel in which there is a satisfying sense of trespass and of comprehensive revelation, as Brownrigg ambitiously plaits the narratives of patients and therapist together. She would make an excellent, if rebellious, analyst herself’ Observer‘A stunning interpretation of birth, death, war and bereavement’ Scotland on Sunday‘Grippingly readable . . . An old-fashioned novel, one full of texture and detail, in which character and plot are patiently dissected and illuminated so that a larger picture might become apparent. In its ambition and commitment, The Delivery Room stands out as one of the most striking and pleasing novels so far this year’ TLS‘Both intensely intelligent and highly readable’ The Times

Pages for You is story of the beginning, blossoming and falling apart of a delirious love affair, by Sylvia Brownrigg.‘A love letter written for a lost lover . . . mesmerizing’ – Helen Dunmore, The TimesWhen Flannery Jansen arrives at university, she is totally unprepared for an encounter that will rock her existence. But when she comes across Anne Arden in a local diner, Flannery falls dramatically and desperately in love.Flannery is quickly embarrassed in the face of the older woman’s poise and sophistication, and under the gaze of those impossible green eyes, but slowly their paths intertwine, and soon Flannery becomes Anne’s eager student in life and love.

The Then WivesA husband remembers a party many years – and at least one wife – ago.A Dictionary of BetrayalEntries on the theme of love, loss, party etiquette and sleeping with other people’s partners.

Two women are reunited twenty years after the love affair that changed both their worlds. Sylvia Brownrigg's Pages for Her is a novel about love, memory and what it is to be a woman, a wife, and a mother.'A complex portrait of two women's sexuality . . . an absolute pleasure' – Alice SeboldFlannery, a writer with one well-known rather racy book to her name, is, by her own admission, in a situation she never thought she'd be: married to a man who overshadows her and defined by her primary relationships as wife and mother. When Flannery is invited to a writers' conference she sees a chance to return to a world she knew well. And then she recognizes the name of the chair of the event: Anne Arden. Suddenly Flannery is thrown back twenty years to her eighteen-year-old self and the most intense love affair of her entire life.On the other side of the world Anne is travelling for work. Recently out of a decades-long partnership, she feels adrift, unsettled. When a friend asks her to chair an event at a writers' conference she says yes and a couple of months later, on the same campus where they met and fell in love, Anne and Flannery are reunited. Though their lives have taken them in different and unexpected directions, the pull between them proves irresistible.

Two women are reunited twenty years after the love affair that changed both their worlds. Sylvia Brownrigg's Pages for Her is a novel about love, memory and what it is to be a woman, a wife, and a mother.'A complex portrait of two women's sexuality . . . an absolute pleasure' – Alice SeboldFlannery, a writer with one well-known rather racy book to her name, is, by her own admission, in a situation she never thought she'd be: married to a man who overshadows her and defined by her primary relationships as wife and mother. When Flannery is invited to a writers' conference she sees a chance to return to a world she knew well. And then she recognizes the name of the chair of the event: Anne Arden. Suddenly Flannery is thrown back twenty years to her eighteen-year-old self and the most intense love affair of her entire life.On the other side of the world Anne is travelling for work. Recently out of a decades-long partnership, she feels adrift, unsettled. When a friend asks her to chair an event at a writers' conference she says yes and a couple of months later, on the same campus where they met and fell in love, Anne and Flannery are reunited. Though their lives have taken them in different and unexpected directions, the pull between them proves irresistible.

Pages for You is story of the beginning, blossoming and falling apart of a delirious love affair, by Sylvia Brownrigg.‘A love letter written for a lost lover . . . mesmerizing’ – Helen Dunmore, The TimesWhen Flannery Jansen arrives at university, she is totally unprepared for an encounter that will rock her existence. But when she comes across Anne Arden in a local diner, Flannery falls dramatically and desperately in love.Flannery is quickly embarrassed in the face of the older woman’s poise and sophistication, and under the gaze of those impossible green eyes, but slowly their paths intertwine, and soon Flannery becomes Anne’s eager student in life and love.

Sylvia Brownrigg's “wise, intimate, and deliciously entertaining memoir" (Carol Edgarian) reconstructs a poignant story of fathers lost and foundWhen Sylvia Brownrigg received a package addressed to her father that had been lost for over fifty years, she wanted to deliver it to him before it was too late. She did not expect that her father, Nick, would choose not to open it. A few years later, she and her brother finally did.Nick, an absent father, was a would-be writer and back-to-the-lander who lived off the grid in Northern California. Nick’s own father, Gawen—also absent—had been a wellborn Englishman who wrote a Bloomsbury-like novel about lesbian lovers, before moving to Kenya and ultimately dying a mysterious death at age twenty-seven. Brownrigg was told Gawen had likely died by suicide.Reconstructing Gawen’s short, colorful life from revelations in the package takes her through glamorous 1930s London and staid Pasadena, toward the last gasp of the British Empire in Kenya, and from there, deep into the California redwoods, where Nick later carved out a rugged path in the wilderness, keeping his English past at bay. Vividly weaving together the lives of her father and grandfather, through memory and imagination, Brownrigg explores issues of sexuality and silences, and childhoods fractured by divorce. In her uncovering of this lost family, she writes movingly of daughterhood and of parenthood, gradually making her own story whole.

Sylvia Brownrigg's “wise, intimate, and deliciously entertaining memoir" (Carol Edgarian) reconstructs a poignant story of fathers lost and foundWhen Sylvia Brownrigg received a package addressed to her father that had been lost for over fifty years, she wanted to deliver it to him before it was too late. She did not expect that her father, Nick, would choose not to open it. A few years later, she and her brother finally did.Nick, an absent father, was a would-be writer and back-to-the-lander who lived off the grid in Northern California. Nick’s own father, Gawen—also absent—had been a wellborn Englishman who wrote a Bloomsbury-like novel about lesbian lovers, before moving to Kenya and ultimately dying a mysterious death at age twenty-seven. Brownrigg was told Gawen had likely died by suicide.Reconstructing Gawen’s short, colorful life from revelations in the package takes her through glamorous 1930s London and staid Pasadena, toward the last gasp of the British Empire in Kenya, and from there, deep into the California redwoods, where Nick later carved out a rugged path in the wilderness, keeping his English past at bay. Vividly weaving together the lives of her father and grandfather, through memory and imagination, Brownrigg explores issues of sexuality and silences, and childhoods fractured by divorce. In her uncovering of this lost family, she writes movingly of daughterhood and of parenthood, gradually making her own story whole.