Affairs of Love

The years 1880-1900, fin de siecle, the end of the century. Things will never be the same again but no one knows it. In Britain Queen Victoria's long reign is coming to an end, but the country, at ease with itself, is basking in an era of unparalleled wealth, prosperity and expansion but also of grinding poverty and inequality largely ignored except by a caring few. France too is luxuriating in the Belle Epoque an age of excess dominated not only by the pursuit of pleasure but of artistic and cultural supremacy.

In London sisters Lindsey and Estella Abercrombie could not, superficially, be more different: the eldest, Lindsey, austerely handsome, intellectual, socially aware, is destined to break into the male-dominated world of medicine. She is one of the caring few trying to ease the lot of women, victim also of male prejudice and ignorance and condemned to lives of poverty and endless childbearing.

Beautiful, selfish Estella determined to be an actress is however a victim of her own headstrong and passionate nature and sacrifices a promising career in the theatre for a hasty and foolish marriage which is doomed to failure. Both sisters have been disowned by their parents ashamed of their unconventional lifestyles.

Estella progresses from riches to rags to riches - and, in between, to the luxurious life of a courtesan in sybaritic Paris. Lindsey pursuing her medical career battles constantly against prejudice but becomes fascinated by the new discipline of psychoanalysis and becomes a disciple of Freud in Vienna.

This is the story of two unconventional women struggling to escape the conventions of middle-class English morality sexually, professionally and emotionally. It is a story both gloriously romantic and stunningly realistic.


Genre: Historical