I discover as I wend my way through Sharp's books, that she has her bad ones. This is too thin by any stretch. It's not an absolute stinker, but it's hard to recommend it. Those who are compelled, as I seem to be, to read the lot will, nobody else should.

I love the way Sharp uses the vocabulary of the day, reading any Sharp is to discover new words.

Latch-lifter (page 97)

? - damn it, I've lost the other one. ( )

Clever and sometimes funny story about a woman whose husband dies in a plane crash; she survives because---and this is the only way in which she doesn't place her husband's wishes over her own---she insists on sitting at the back of the plane when they travel. The sentences are surprisingly convoluted. The story also explores how the crash affects the children. Because of their inheritance, the son can now propose to his girlfriend, who eventually reminds me of some of P.G. Wodehouse's beautiful but avaricious women, and the daughter can invite her boyfriend to vacation in Greece. The youngest child, hearing her mother's brief doubts about identifying the body correctly, goes to France with her cousin and has adventures as they try to find her father. I liked the idea that the Arthur Prelude that his family comes to remember is much warmer and kinder and caring than the brilliant but distant scholar that he actually seems to have been. This is a coming of age story for Lydia, a teenager, but it is also one for Mrs. Prelude, who finally begins to do things that she wants---note that she seems to be called Mrs. Prelude throughout the book. ( )