Meeting the Friends

Varen got to meet some of the friends last night. So far he's only really met Loulou, since I live with her, and Jarred of Hurlingham very briefly when he sneakily visited J at work to deliver my Christmas present.

So last night we had a lovely dinner at Cranks with two of my favourite people, Sal&Bru. It was really good to see them again and although I was nervous about introducing them to the new man, since they were used to me with Bean, I think it went fairly well and a fun evening with good food was had by all. I'm still waiting for Sal's report-back, tho ;)

So, back on the weekend, before the hectic week took over, I finished reading Douglas Kennedy's A Special Relationship.

Sally Goodchild, a thirty-seven-year-old American journalist, suddenly finds herself pregnant and married to an English foreign correspondent, Tony Hobbs, whom she met while they were both on assignment in Cairo. From the outset Sally's relationship with both Tony and London is an uneasy one - as she finds her husband and his city to be far more foreign than imagined. But her problems soon turn to nightmares when she discovers that everything can be taken down and used against you.

I quite enjoyed it. It is one of two Douglas Kennedy books we have at Book Club which initially I avoided since they appeared "way to girlie" from me ... Eventually, I decided to throw caution to the wind and give his The Pursuit of Happiness a read.

Manhattan, Thanksgiving Eve 1945. War is over and Eric Smythe's party is swinging. Everyone is there, including his sister Sara. Then in walks the gatecrasher - Jack Malone, an army journalist fresh from a defeated Germany. This chance meeting between Sara and Jack will have profound consequences.

This one I thoroughly enjoyed and I think it has a much more intricate and enthralling story than Special Relationship. Although SR was quite a hectic story, you knew it had to all end happily ever after no matter how bad it got in the middle, otherwise why would you read it ;) It's not quite the same in Pursuit, there's much more going on. Anyway, I enjoyed these two and would happily read other Douglas Kennedy books, no matter that there'll never be a forensic pathologist in any of them or how girlie the cover will predictably be ;)