What You Will

Everyone has a different idea about what love is. Gwen, an artist, and Lawrence, an academic, are happily married with a young child and an enviable life. When Hilary, Gwen’s closest friend, arrives from New York bruised by a broken engagement, a lost job, and a misguided love affair, Gwen determines to find her someone to marry. Will it be another Oxford don? An ambitious young musician? Or a professional from the scandal-ridden museum world Hilary has fled?

The more Gwen focuses on Hilary’s destiny, the more she grows curious about the men gathering around her friend. She is tempted away from her husband at the very moment when he needs to confide romantic preoccupations of his own. The bonds of affection twist. Can they survive betrayal?

“A playfully serious novel with thoughts and ideas exploding like a storm of confetti” Sarah Dunant, GUARDIAN

“In What You Will the characters, like those of Henry James, are people on whom nothing is wasted. Their cleverness and sensitivity does not preserve them from any of life’s disasters but at least they are fully conscious as they enter the maelstrom. This is social comedy at its most poignant.” Edmund White