Showing results by author "Barbara Trapido" in All Categories

Eighteen-year-old Katherine - bright, stylish, frustratedly suburban - doesn't know how her life will change when the brilliant Jacob Goldman first offers her a place at university. When she enters the Goldmans' rambling bohemian home, presided over by the beatific matriarch Jane, she realises that Jacob and his family are everything she has been waiting for. But when a romantic entanglement ends in tears, Katherine is forced into exile from the family she loves most. And her journey back into the fold, after more than a decade away, will yield all kinds of delightful surprises...

Jem is a joyful mystery to Alice. She is something to give thanks for. And when she disappears from Alice's life, as suddenly as she entered it, a whirl of glamour, subversion and literary references, Alice is left bereft. But then she meets Giovanni, presumptuous and hectoring, passionate and beautiful, who leads her back to her childhood friend and the mystery and chaos still surrounding her. Alice finds herself being seduced all over again.

Lydia is killed in a car accident, but she returns to her bereft sister as a benign ghost who nonetheless comes to haunt the lives of those around her in unexpected ways: Jonathan Goldman, whose flat Lydia is running from when she is knocked down; his daughter, Stella, who has discovered her father has been having an affair with the gladiatorial Sonia; Stella's genius painter-boy lover, Izzy, whom she leaves behind as she flees to the arms of kindly Peregrine. Along with good stepmothers, bad mothers, strange professors and wicked monks, their lives collide in a breathtaking finale.

Sparky Christina and her saintly adopted sister Pam couldn't be more different. And when they meet similarly mismatched friends Jago and Peter, the four embark on a dazzling series of pairings and partings, outrageous coincidences and 11th-hour entrances interrupted one disastrous Halloween when schoolboy revelry turns horribly wrong. Three years on, as Christina analyses the wit, cruelty and crossed genders of Shakespearean comedy, the cast of her own life reunites and the curtain falls on some gloriously unexpected partnerships.

The time is 1995, but everybody is linked by their past. Brilliant Australian Caroline can command everyone except her own ghoulish mother, which means that things aren't easy for Josh and Zoe, her husband and twelve-year-old daughter. In its mix of people from different spheres, the book throws up the complexity, cruelty and richness of the global world while, as a sequence of personal stories, it comes together like a dance; a masquerade in which things are not always what they seem.

Ali Bobrow is a single parent with a fraught nine-year-old daughter, a malevolent ex with a grabby new wife, and an underused artistic talent. A pushover when it comes to needy neighbours and uninvited children, she allows her house to be the local drop-in centre, until she collides with Noah Glazer. A solid man of science, Noah walks into Ali's life bringing good sense, order and security. But ten years on, Ali is drawn back into the complexities of her past: an old lover, two ex-spouses, a colleague from clown school and a small smuggled cat all help to rock the boat.

Katherine, appassionata di moda e Jane Austen, ha diciotto anni e viene da una famiglia medioborghese. Ha una fascinazione per le eroine sfortunate del romanticismo ed è molto felice di essere stata accettata nel corso di filosofia del professor Jacob Goldman. Quando poi viene invitata nella tenuta di campagna del professore e conosce, anzi, viene letteralmente risucchiata, dall’intera, numerosissima, chiassosa famiglia Goldman, la felicità si tramuta in esaltazione e costernazione, perché i Goldman sono tutto ciò che Katherine vorrebbe essere, ma ha vergogna di confessare.