Janet McNeill è un'autrice celebrata per la sua voce distintiva e il suo approccio umoristico alla narrazione, in particolare nella letteratura per l'infanzia. Le sue opere, spesso ispirate dalle sue esperienze in Irlanda del Nord, sono caratterizzate da arguzia e vivacità immaginativa che risuonano nei lettori di tutte le età. McNeill ha magistralmente fuso elementi comici con una profonda comprensione della prospettiva infantile, guadagnandosi un posto duraturo nella letteratura. La sua capacità di creare personaggi memorabili e narrazioni avvincenti continua ad essere apprezzata.
"If it is difficult to accept middle-age, is it harder for those who are no longer beautiful and passionate or, especially harder, for those who have never known love? Sarah Vincent is fifty and, like her group of friends, she is resigned to the absurdities of middle-age but over the course of a summer Sarah discovers that life can shatter the past, deeply-held faiths are destroyed and she discovers that new beginnings, and new love, have always existed for her.
Harold's death leaves Julia a widow, alone and struggling with grief as well as her new life. How can she begin to build new relationships with her friends, what does she now owe to her children, or they to her? For the first time Julia has to learn independence, she needs to discover who she is when she is no longer a wife and is now a mother to children who do not need her. As a widow can Julia find a freedom, an identity, which has never existed in her life before?
In 1950s Belfast a clergyman, Edward Ballater, fears for his family and doubts his faith. Edward’s congregation do not understand his integrity, he deceives himself about the frustrations of his marriage and tries to comfort a young man whose life has been built on family lies. Is Edward’s love for his family stronger than his failures, in the aftermath of an IRA bomb can he find a new understanding of his life?
As she becomes better acquainted with the guests at her aunt's beach resort "hotel," Kate realizes first impressions are deceiving.