Successful, admired, fairly happily married and ambitious, Steven Sheppard is very much a pillar of the community. But inside him lurks a little demon of boredom which prompts him to ask if there... This description may be from another edition of this product.
Monica Dickens is one of those authors who can make someone's boring, everyday life into a captivating narrative. "Thursday Afternoons" is the story of a middle-aged GP, successful in his career but dissatisfied with life. At first Steven sounds like a great guy surrounded by a bunch of silly people - the adoring but incompetent trainee nurse, his insipid worrywart of a wife, jolly friends who can't understand his artistic ambitions, various whiny patients, the creepily silent battered woman his wife hires as a maid. The minor characters are almost more three-dimensional than Steven himself. But as the story develops, we see that he too has a remarkably selfish side, illustrated for instance by his reluctance to answer the phone resulting in the death of a client's baby. I'm not sure what to make of the ending - I can't say I didn't see that one coming so it wasn't a deus ex machina or a gratuitious "twist" but it was certainly unexpected.
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