A choice of first novels | 27 March 2010

Catharine is a middle-class, married woman in her late thirties living in a genteel village an hour from London with her husband, a successful lawyer, who nicknames her ‘Catch’.

Catharine is a middle-class, married woman in her late thirties living in a genteel village an hour from London with her husband, a successful lawyer, who nicknames her ‘Catch’. Though educated and bright, she has no career. She is ‘famous’ for her ‘lack of sense of humour’ and is ‘the most feminine woman’ her husband has ever known.

Simon Robson’s novel spans one rainy winter day in Catch’s life, in which she spends the morning drinking tea and worrying about her frustrated musical ambitions, her marriage and her failure to get pregnant, and the afternoon being shouted at by her neighbours and best friend. The debt to Mrs Dalloway is clear, but Robson doesn’t even allow himself the diversion of a party.