A Dubious Legacy

STAGE 4 - Human Interest
Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 4 1.400 Headwords,
Word count: 15.100
Mary Wesley (Retold by Rosalie Kerr)

Wesley's world is one of speculation about relationships, gossip, and innuendo. She explores forces that unite and divide friends and lovers. In 1944, Henry Tillotson brings his bride Margaret to his country house, where she takes to her bed and remains in self-indulgent isolation. Ten years later, two younger friends of Henry bring their girlfriends for the weekend. In the years that follow, the two couples marry and return regularly, their mundane lives punctuated by Margaret's eccentric boudoir conversations or scandalous ventures into their company. Henry dies in 1990, attended by his friends' (or his?) daughters, and the reader's visits to Wesley's well-realized world draw to an end with his departure. For readers who appreciate nuances of language and emotion and the incongruities of life, Wesley's book will be a treat.