How well do you really know the people you love? How well do you know yourself? What constitutes the examined life – the only kind worth living? A bold and brilliant fictional debut that takes the lid off marriage and looks into the head of a wife and mother coming face-to-face with betrayal, the empty nest, fading parents, men who don't grow up, sexual boredom and sexual excitement: the unpredictable fallout of ordinary life. Jean, an American, is author of a health column but she misdiagnoses the acute pathologies in her own life. She and her British husband Mark, a successful advertising executive, have escaped to an idyllic island, but even there the real world finds them. The twin demons of sex and illness reach in to jolt Jean out of her comfortable existence. She finds a lump on her breast, opens an erotic email Attachment intended for her husband... and is drawn into a curious double life. Illusions about her perfect marriage are shattered but, at the same time, the discovery allows her a new kind of licence. A professional watcher, Jean suddenly wants to be part of the action. Back in London, she takes unprecedented risks - a brief fling with her husband's friend and business partner - and when crisis calls her back to a New York she thought she'd outgrown, she finds there are unexpected consolations….Intriguing, sexy, smart and transgressive, with twists and turns that keep the reader guessing and a shocking denouement that forces Jean to make a choice, Attachment is a provocative, compellingly written novel about who we are and the courage to find out.
