A Question of Love by Isabel Wolff

A Question of Love

By Isabel Wolff

Sometimes the hardest questions to answer are the ones you ask yourself...

When Laura Quick finds herself accidentally hosting a quirky quiz show on national TV, nothing prepares her for one of the contestants - her ex-boyfriend, Luke.

She's still coming to terms with the loss of her husband, Nick, having just packed up his clothes - and hopefully her sad memories of him - for good.  So what does the still delicious Luke's arrival, complete with six-year old daughter, and badly behaved ex-wife mean?

Laura's sisters think he's just the ticket: the perfect man for her to move on with and to forget Nick.  But Laura finds more questions than answers as she tries to work out whether to risk everything on Luke for a second time, what went so wrong with her marriage to Nick, and how much she reallyknows about her nearest and dearest...

Buy The Book
"A touching, compulsive read. Love it!"- OK Magazine
"An unpredictable book that is darker, deeper, funnier and more emotionally satisfying than most chick-lit. There's the presenter of a quirky new TV quiz show, her missing husband, an old flame, complicated sisters and an exploration of how not being able to let go of the past clouds our judgement."- Australian Women's Weekly
"A cut above many chick-lit offerings, this is an engaging read and an intriguing page-turner."- Sainsbury's Magazine
"Old passions are re-ignited but should Laura risk everything on a past love or stick with her safe life? A charming, funny and unpredictable novel."- Company
"A resigned singleton, Laura's world is rocked when her first boyfriend reappears. Compulsive."- Heat
"Pure feel-good escapism. Perfect."- Sophie Kinsella
"Compulsive"- She Magazine
"Feel-good, gritty and full of surprises."- Cosmopolitan

Inspiration

When I plan a new book I like to give the heroine an interesting job because I believe it makes for a more fulfilling read. I very much like novels which combine a page-turning narrative with a deal of interesting information, and so this is what I have been trying to do in my own. So I made Tiffany an advertising copywriter, Minty a radio reporter, Faith a weather presenter, Rose an agony aunt and Miranda an animal behaviourist. The careers my heroines have also resonate throughout the book in an ironic or comic way. So Miranda is an animal behaviourist who has behaved very badly in her past; Rose is an agony aunt with a huge unresolved problem of her own; Faith is a weather presenter who can't predict the consequences of her own actions. Laura Quick, in 'A Question of Love', is the presenter of a TV quiz - but the tables are about to be turned on her as she now starts having to answer some tricky questions herself - notably about the fate of her husband, Nick, whose memory she has been trying to lay to rest.

I also chose the theme of quizzing because, like most of us, I adore quizzes - I like nothing better than to sit on the sofa on a Monday evening shouting out the answers to Mastermind and University Challenge. I sneak away from my work to do online quizzes at the wonderful quizzing website, Quizzing.co.uk. But before I began the book, I'd been thinking about the whole area of quiz culture - the enduring popularity of pub quizzes, the plethora of new quizzes on our screen, such as the excellent 'Perseverance'. I'd been thinking about the way the BBC had to bring back Mastermind due to popular demand, and I thought about the electrifying hold over us that Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? still has. With all this in mind, I formed the idea of a woman who had fantastic general knowledge, but who lacked self-knowledge. What I then had to to was to invent a fictional quiz for Laura to present in the book - a quiz which was not like any existing TV quiz, of course - and I hope you'll like the quiz I've come up with - Whadda Ya Know?!.

This is my first novel since having my daughter, Alice, eighteen months ago, and so inevitably the theme of parenthood has also found its way in. Laura, and her two sisters, Felicity and Hope, all have very different attitudes to motherhood, all of them equally problematic. Added to this is Laura's growing infatuation with an old flame, Luke, who comes with a airport trolley load of emotional baggage in the form of an adorable little girl, and a very neurotic ex-wife with a herd of pygmy goats. As Laura becomes more involved with Luke, she finds she's having to ask herselfsome difficult questions too. So 'A Question of Love' is really about questions and answers, and about memory - about what we easily remember, and the things we'd prefer to forget...

 

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