The Lighted Rooms

Telling the stories of Eloise, a brilliant, emotionally reticent fund-manager, who is approaching fifty and has gambled millions on information gleaned from her one-time boyfriend, Claude (a dashing French scientist), and of Joan, her septuagenarian mother, a passionate, clever woman who finds herself trapped in a – hideously expensive – nursing home, a victim of her daughter’s best intentions, albeit guilt-led, and of a world that denies the elderly independence and respect. But this is just the tip of iceberg. The novel also takes us to South Africa, to the shameful horrors inflicted by the British on the Boer civilians in their concentration camps and the story of Joan’s resilient grandmother who survived such a camp, and back into the nineteenth century, to the family who lived in 17 Huntley Gardens (now Joan’s nursing home), and the secrets that shaped their lives.