Interpretations of love - jane campbell

A profound debut novel that explores complicated love, secrets, and familial misunderstandings from the celebrated octogenarian author of the trail-blazing ( Oprah Daily ) collection Cat Brushing Its the week of Dr.

Agnes Staceys only daughters wedding, and each of the eleven attendees of the small family gathering is bringing their own simmering tensions to the event.

Agnes uncle, Professor Malcolm Miller, has harbored a family secret since her parents - his sister and brother in law - died in a car crash when she was a young girl.

Joseph Bradshaw, who distantly married into the family, has nursed a secret obsession with Agnes since his brief stint as her therapist.

Agnes herself will be returning to her ex-husbands home for the first time, just as shes trying to extricate herself from a potent love affair.

Each of them has the tools to analyze the love lives of others, yet find themselves unable to recognize the love in their own lives.

And though theyve each muddled through painful years in emotional isolation, only Malcolm knows that the origins of their thwarted attachments all lie in the same English seaside town.

Where better to lay bare the failures and secrets of ones advancing age than at an intimate celebration of love? In this incisive and involving debut novel, Campbell parses the fraught inner lives of ordinary people doing their best to process the aftershocks of war, the parenting they do and dont receive, and the many different forms love can take in one family.