Love Among the Single Classes

by Angela Lambert

'We who are members of the single classes, unmarried and unattached, are always waiting to fall in love...Every day and each encounter holds out the possibility of that momentous flash which will change everything.'

Constance Liddell, in her mid-forties, answers a personal column ad - 'Polish gentleman, 50s, political refugee, seeks intellectual woman for marriage' - and arranges to meet Iwo Zaluski. For Constance, her work, children, friends and friendship with her charming, philandering ex-husband only sometimes alleviate the deeper longing for intimacy and marriage. Meeting Iwo Zaluski for the first time, on a walk on Hampstead Heath, she perceives in him the loneliness of a fellow exile. Too rapidly, she falls in love.

Genres: Fiction

284 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Angela Maria Lambert was a British journalist and author. She is best known for her novels A Rather English Marriage and Kiss and Kin, the latter of which won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award.

Reviews

[BellaGBear]

Lovely to read a book anout an empowered older women who still does stuff in her life. If it works or not (for that you have to read the book), but it is anyway good for people who fear that in middle-age there is no option anymore for new love.

[Marcia]

For a 250 page novel this took me a while to read. It was a case of style vs substance, where I enjoyed the former but couldn't relate to the latter.

Constance is a 44 year old divorced mother of 3 (two have already left home and the third is in her mid-teens). That's not the bit I struggle to relate to, rather it's her firm belief that "we who are members of the single classes, unmarried and unattached, are always waiting to fall in love. We live in a state of emotional vulnerability. Every day and each encounter holds out thr possibility of that momentous flash which will change everything."

She answers an ad in the classifieds and falls fast and hard.

Half way through the book the perspective changes. Ivo's are now the eyes through which we see the situation. I'm not going to give any spoilers, but suffice it to say that any sympathies I may have had for Constance disappear. She's an intelligent woman, but if she can't see Ivo for who he is, then she's not very aware.

Yes, she's lonely, and she thinks she needs a man to remedy that loneliness, but does that mean she must subjugate any pride or sense of self worth?

I've read Lambert before and I won't not read her again, but maybe I won't seek her out as this one left me with a sense of deep frustration

[Melanie]

A well-written story about relationships.

[Merrilie Rowley]

I very much liked this book and look forward to reading some more of Angela Lambert.

[Annette Kane]

Dated; an insight into attitudes of the time

[Eliza]

A psychological perspective on a divorce's relationship with a foreigner. Mid-book it flips to the man's perspective. An interesting read, but not really recommended.

[Clodagh]

I really enjoyed this book. I could see myself in Constance at times - not a good thing! :-)