British novelist Amanda Craig joins us in conversation with literary journalist and critic Suzi Feay, talking about her new book The Three Graces published in June 2023.
Synopsis
When Enzo shoots an illegal migrant from his bedroom one night, it triggers a series of events that embroil old and young, rich and poor, native and foreign. His elderly neighbours Ruth, Diana and Marta are three friends who have retired to Tuscany. Ruth’s favourite grandson Olly is about to get married from her idyllic hillside farmhouse; however, the bride, Tania, seems curiously unengaged by anything but vlogging as a social media influencer. Marta, preparing to give the annual music recital sponsored by a Russian oligarch in hiding from Putin, is increasingly unwell, and her grandson, Xan, is full of resentment at the inequalities he encounters. Diana is nursing her husband, Lord Evenlode, who is living with dementia, and looking back over a long and troubled marriage.
Over two weeks in May, all these characters will face challenging choices as they grapple with their own past and with present dangers. For although the Tuscan spring looks as ravishing as a Renaissance painting, the realities of modern life make it harder and harder to believe that there is more that unites us than what keeps us apart.
Brilliant, enthralling, funny and generous, this is an exploration of the indomitable human heart.
About Amanda Craig
Amanda Craig is a British novelist, short-story writer and critic and has been a journalist for newspapers such as The Sunday Times, the Observer, The Daily Telegraph and the Independent. She was the children’s critic for The Independent on Sunday and The Times, and one of the first to spot the Harry Potter books, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Twilight, How to Train Your Dragon and The Hunger Games.
She still reviews children’s books for The New Statesman, and literary fiction for The Observer, but is mostly a full-time novelist. Her seventh novel, Hearts And Minds, was long-listed for the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction, and her eighth, The Lie of the Land, was a Radio 4 Book At Bedtime, a YOU Magazine Book Club choice and picked by six national newspapers as a Book of the Year in 2018.