Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0349102260, Paperback)

Eliza Peabody is one of those dangerously blameless women who believe they have God in their pocket. She is a modern-day Florence Nightingale, always up at the Hospice or the Wives' club; she is too enthusiastic; she talks too much. Her concern for the welfare of her wealthy south London neighbours even extends to ingenuous, well-meaning notes of unsolicited advice under the door. It is just such a one-sided correspondence that heralds Eliza's undoing. Did her letter have something to do with Joan's abrupt disappearance from number forty-one? What to make of the long absences of her husband and Joan's, and of the two men's new, inseparable friendship? And why will no one else on Rathbone Road speak of Joan? As Eliza's own life seems to disintegrate, she finds that, despite the pity and embarrassment with which her neighbours greet her, she is at last being drawn into their lives - although not in the way she had once fantasised about. This is a sharp, poignant and wickedly funny tale of love, heartache and disillusionment.

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0312143982, Paperback)

With prose that is witty, vibrant, and off-the-wall, this novel traces the emotional breakdown--and eventual restoration--of a smart and wildly imaginative woman who has become unbearably isolated in her preposterous home in present-day South London. "Excellently done."--Anita Brookner. Whitbread Award winner.

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0312131518, Hardcover)

A winner of the Whitbread Award for Best Novel of the Year, a haunting novel traces the sometimes hilarious descent into madness and eventual restoration of a smart, imaginative English woman isolated in her well-to-do home who writes letters to a neighbor she barely knows.

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0786206047, Paperback)

With prose that is vibrant, witty, and off-the-wall, this recent winner of Britain's Whitbread Award for Best Novel of the Year traces the emotional breakdown--and then restoration--of Eliza Peabody, a smart and wildly imaginative woman who has become unbearably isolated in her prosperous home in present-day South London. "A startling portrait of a woman who is dying alive".--Ruth Rendell, Daily Telegraph (London).