Out of Love

by Victoria Clayton

Book Overview

The debut novel about the value of friendship and sexual love, and what happens when one is sacrificed for the other--by one of Britain's freshest new talents. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312186452
• ISBN13: 9780312186456
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 374 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.9" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Read it!

This was the third book I read by Victoria Clayton, and I enjoyed it immensely. It has a different "take" on the classic romance and doesn't have a predictable ending.

This novel confounded my expectations ...

I have never read any of V. Clayton's work in the past, so I had little or no expectations for this book. It began well, but many romantic novels do only to descend into standard cliches. For example many authors feel the need to portray their heroine in a totally sympathetic light and her main rival as entirely unworthy and this never happens here. Daisy the heroine is beautiful, intelligent and quite irritatingly competent but in many ways her friend Min is more likeable. Both of them have irritating yet highly endearing flaws. When Min's inadequacies are highlighted - her untidiness and lack of domestic and mothering skills - at first I expected a payoff - but as I read on I realised that the author was describing reality - good people have major faults and that's just the way life is. It was refreshing to read a book where I found myself surprised by plot developments, and compelled to read this book through at a sitting. Nor was I disappointed by the ending, which was genuinely moving, while avoiding melodramatic excess.I look forward to reading more of this author's works in the future.

My favorite book this year!

This is a fun book you can really sink your teeth into...at least you'll be sinking your teeth into something as you read it - lots of scenes involve cooking, food, and an AGA stove. Min and Daisy have a warm, wonderful friendship, the kind of bond that can withstand a 15 year separation. All of the characters are very funny and very human. Min's got to be my favorite. I thought I was a flaky mother, but she makes me look like supermom! I am recommending this to all my harried married friends, and all my controlled and controlling single friends as well.

Stunning! I couldn't put it down.

Delightful, sophisticated and scholarly; this gem evokes Academic life in an England which has unfortunately changed vastly. I'm looking forward to her next novel and even plan to search for her two children's books. The reviewer from Australia should take another look at it. It would be petty to list the spelling errors I noticed in the text but in the absence of live proof readers in this computer age I regret that this is now the norm.

Wonderful escape; amusing, intelligent social comedy

I was first put onto this by a 20-yr old girl student who told that all her group were crazy about it. Then a middle-aged man told me he had been unable to put it down and sat up most of a night to finish it. The reviewer for the US 'Publisher's Weekly' is enthusiastic too. I can only agree - really acute social comedy, and more. The reader from Aussie seems to have totally missed the point - the whole story is told from the viewpoint of Diana/Daisy, so "author commentary" would be completely out of place. This is a book clearly aimed at providing enjoyment, not one of those tedious, depressing polemical novels. The characters reveal themselves through excellent and witty dialogue. Nowhere is it suggested Min is "well-balanced and level-headed" the whole point is that she is dedicated to her work and totally neglects husband, house and children. She is the opposite of Diana the control freak. The story shows how two women of very different personalities can nevertheless continue devoted friends. Like all of us they are neither wholly admirable or wholly bad. I give it 5 stars and look forward to the next one.