Fanny Savage has been married twenty years. Married to Will, an up-and-coming politician - but also married to duty and to family. Fanny has learnt what it is to be the dutiful wife; the public face of marital support. But what about the life beyond photo-calls and MPs surgeries? Is being the good wife compatible with the good life?
The narrative leaps back and forth with agility as moments in Fanny’s day-to-day life take her back to their roots in the past. As Fanny questions where she is now, we the reader learn how she got there - and in doing so, see the web of connections that bind lives together. Acutely aware of the ties of love, and of the fragility of happiness, it takes a trip to her father’s home town in Italy for Fanny to reassess her life. Under the Italian sun, and washed in the ruby richness of the wines she was educated in as a child, Fanny explores both her background, and the question of the future. Yet Fanny’s Italian sojourn isn’t an oasis of contemplation; as ever, family life bursts on to the scene. Life, in all its muddle, is chasing Fanny - and it seems she owes it some answers.
Buchan’s writing manages to be sympathetic, yet uncompromising. The present is loaded with the freight of the past, yet nothing seems predetermined - it is a voyage of discovery for the reader just as for the characters. Buchan’s portrait of a marriage is a compelling one - no easy shortcuts, stock arguments or convenient resolutions. Instead the relationships of the novel owe much to the wines that Fanny knows so well: matured by the years, heady and complex. Fresh from the success of ‘Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman’, Buchan has once again produced a novel that will intoxicate.
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