"From the acclaimed author of the "trail-blazing" (Oprah Daily) collection of stories Cat Brushing comes a profound and entertaining debut novel about the ways we experience, perceive, and misunderstand love. When Jane Campbell published Cat Brushing in her eightieth year, the debut was lauded as an "excellent, pathbreaking collection" (New York Times Book Review). Blending unique insight with a wry sense of humor, Jane Campbell brought a fresh and much-needed perspective to a generation of women often overlooked. In her incisive debut novel, Interpretations of Love, she digs even deeper into the psyches and emotional barriers of a demographic shaped by war and by the social strictures of the twentieth century. It's the week of Dr. Agnes Stacey's only daughter's wedding, and each of the eleven attendees of the small family gathering is bringing their own simmering tensions to the event. Agnes's uncle, Professor Malcolm Miller, has harbored a family secret since her parents-his sister and brother-in-law-died in a car crash when she was a young girl. Dr. Joseph Bradshaw, who distantly married into the family, has nursed a secret obsession with Agnes since his brief stint as her therapist. Agnes herself will be returning to her ex-husband's home for the first time, just as she's trying to extricate herself from a potent love affair. Each of them has the tools to analyze the love lives of others, yet find themselves unable to recognize the love in their own lives. And though they've each muddled through painful years in emotional isolation, only Malcolm knows that the origins of their thwarted attachments all lie in the same English seaside town. Where better to lay bare the failures and secrets of one's advancing age than at an intimate celebration of love? In this utterly involving novel, Campbell parses the fraught inner lives of ordinary people doing their best to process the aftershocks of war, the parenting they do and don't receive, and the many different forms love can take in one family"-- Provided by publisher.
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