This is well-written, and the characters are believable enough, but there's really not much plot, and I didn't find the people particularly sympathetic. It didn't have the acerbic irony of Anne Tyler, though it could have been that type of book. Nothing to dislike, but nothing to really like either. ( )

The main characters are three women living in flats in a converted mansion in Swansea, Wales.

Dora is 92 and has been a committed socialist all her life. She's furious at the Labour government over its betrayal of the working class and the Iraq war. She looks back at her life and misses her daughter, who died 40 years ago.

Eirlys seems more conventional and motherly, but she too has a past of going to prison for her political beliefs (in her case Welsh nationalism), which Dora doesn't even know about.

Young Hannah in her mid 20s has left a stifling marriage and is trying to make a new life for herself.

This shortish novel is another character study, lots of thoughts, feelings, reflections, events mainly used to reveal more such stuff. I quite like stories about really old people looking back over their lives and I liked this one.

I did have a few quibbles about the portrayal of Dora, mainly little mistakes which anyone with no knowledge of the minutiae of far left politics wouldn't notice. First, there's a reference to obituaries in the Daily Worker and the Morning Star - the Daily Worker became the Morning Star at some point (the British Communist Party's newspaper). Second, Dora refers to herself as an ex-Communist and an ex-Trotskyite - Trotskyite and other political words ending in -ite are derogatory and she would call herself a Trotskyist - and she probably doesn't consider herself ex anything as her political views haven't changed, it's just she's dropped out of activism.

This is never going to be a bestseller but I really liked it and it's made me want to go back to her other novels. ( )