Breaking the Chain

When Phoebe married Duncan Moon, she imagined they would get around to loving one another. But she hadn't bargained on the stifling effect on her husband of his alarming family, nor the many ways in which the family would contrive to exclude her from their affluent but hollow lives. It is only when Phoebe reads the hidden diaries of her father-in-law's ex-mistress that she learns the truth about the Moons - and discovers love where she had never thought she'd find it.

In this wickedly funny first novel, first published in 1995, Maggie Makepeace paints a devastating portrait of upper middle-class family life. By turns hilarious, painful, tragic and unexpectedly poignant, this is black comedy at it startling best.