Reviewed by BarbUK
I have had a wonderful morning. I settled down in a comfy chair at 9am and began the Gregory book “Alice Hartley’s Happiness”
Its 1pm now and I have just finished the book.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.
No, its not historical, in fact it is very modern.
The subject is Alice who is forty two and whose husband is having an affair with a nineteen year old student.
Determined not to have everyone feel sorry for her, a fortunate meeting with a young man and a van see her emptying the marital home of all its treasures and comforts.
The two then set up home in Aunty Sarah’s (mistakenly pronounced dead by the local doctor) and set up a Centre for Growth and well being. Middle aged frustrated women are matched up with younger men wanting adventures (and sex).
The adventures include a lady giving birth in a dolphin pool, the freeing of said dolphins into the sea. The making of a crop circle in the doctor’s carefully nurtured hay field, the local press believing the doctor is the centre of psychic activity, the local vicar being berated for his watered down dispensing of faith and works and his subsequent burst of energy. The sex is not the raunchy stuff of other works, more the closed door suggestion of previous eras. And the hilarious singing of “ten green bottles” to slow down an over eager youth.
At the instigation of the doctor the police arrive to arrest Alice for practising medicine with out a license, for kidnap and for running a bawdy house. The ex- husband comes back onto to the scene pressing for a committal, her young lover crumbles under police presence and poor Alice sees a lifetime of psychiatric interference looming.
But Aunty Sarah has other ideas…
Not your usual Gregory, but a complete hoot! It had me laughing out loud at certain parts, and nodding in agreement in others.It was an easy read and a fun read, with many situations very well observed. I was grinning and cheering at the ending. I loved it!
