LATEST SALES & OFFERS: PROMOTIONS
Judy Astley was frequently told off for day-dreaming at her drearily traditional school but has found it to be the ideal training for becoming a writer. There were several false-starts to her career- secretary at an all-male Oxford college (sacked for undisclosable reasons), at an airline (decided, after a crash and a hijacking, that she was safer elsewhere) and as a dress designer (quit before anyone noticed she was adapting Vogue patterns). She spent some years as a parent and as a painter before sensing that the day was approaching when she'd have to go out and get a Proper Job. With a nagging certainty that she was temperamentally unemployable, and desperate to avoid office coffee, having to wear tights every day and missing out on sunny days on Cornish beaches with her daughters, she wrote her first novel, Just for the Summer. She has now had eleven novels published by Black Swan.
The mainly media-based residents of The Close regard the nearby council estate as the source of every act of crime and chaos. They themselves don't steal, threaten or harass - and they are big on Neighbourhood Watch. But are they really whiter-than-grey? What about all the artful dodging? A beady, ironic, often comic, scrutiny of the smug, and snobbish. (Kirkus UK)
