Disapproval

Can a grown up daughter sleep with an ex-lover of her mother's?  

Can a woman fall in love with her oldest friend who reveals himself to be unhappily married to his wife whom she has never much liked?

Edie is divorced with an adult son and daughter. She lives in Shepherds Bush and runs an independent cinema in the East End of London.

A brief fling with a well-known French film director has extraordinary repercussions within her family and gives rise to a circle of disapproval, which comes in all different guises depending on the gender and generational points of view of those who are doing the disapproving.  

Her ex-husband, Will, and her daughter, Caitlin, fall out with her - and with each other.

For those who love the fiction of Anne Tyler, Elizabeth Strout and Ann Patchett, Disapproval is a study of loneliness but also an examination of the grey areas of morality not written down in any religious or legal texts.  

These scenarios give rise to wildly differing opinions and reactions in social and familial groups. The novel asserts that disapproval is the more bourgeois, poor relation of jealousy, but that it is just as corrosive a force between friends and family, and results in conflict every bit as toxic and destructive.