Commencing Our Descent - Tapa dura

Sadie is in a tailspin: will anyone break her fall?

Sadie Summerfield wants to be free of him, her Perfect Husband.

She wants to be free to dally with a clever, funny stranger, like Edwin, who so readily turns his piercing blue eyes on her (and off his wife). Free to be who she is, free to do as she pleases, free to fall in love. So, she falls. Suddenly and surreptitiously, she is on the threshold of an affair, and finds herself speaking to, thinking of, making plans with, plotting with only him, her would-be lover. The prospect of the affair takes Sadie and Edwin soaring to new, or old, heights. But, up there beyond the clouds, it’s altogether too simple to forget that flight is easy, that it’s landing – or take-off – which is so very hard.

Her most astute and affecting novel yet.

So skilful is Suzannah Dunn that she manages to make a book built around a non-event utterly eventful and compelling.

Proves again that she has unrivalled access to the most hidden, most intimate machinery of ordinary people’s lives and longings, their marriages and affairs, their reservations and destinations, their journeys and their arrivals.

Suzannah here combines the sharpness and tautness of her short stories with the warmth and detail of her novels, and gets the balance perfect.

‘If he had known what I was planning, he would have been happy for me, and I did not want him to be happy for me. I knew that I would have his blessing, but I did not want to be blessed: that was preciisely what I did not want. I had to be free of that.’

Sadie Summerfield wants to be free, in fact, of him, her Perfect Husband. Free to dally with a clever, funny stranger. Free to be who she is, free to do as she pleases, free to fall in love. So, she falls. Suddennly and surreptitiously, she is on the threshold of an affair. The prospect of the affair takes Sadie soaring to new, or old, heights. But, up there beyond the clouds, it’s altogether too simple to forget that flight is easy, that it’s landing – or take-off – which is so very hard.

In this, her most astute and affecting novel yet, Suzannah Dunn proves that she has unrivalled access to the most hidden, most intimate machinery of ordinary people’s lives and longings, their marriages and affairs, their reservations and destinations, their journeys and their arrivals. 'Commencing Our Descent' is a bold book, a book with its gaze turned yearningly skywards while its feet are planted emphatically on the ground.