DUBIOUS LEGACY (OBL 4: OXFORD BOOKWORMS LIBRARY)

In 1944 Henry Tillotson brings his new wife, Margaret, home to his farmhouse in the English countryside. Margaret is a strange, unpleasant woman, determined, it seems, to make Henry''s life miserable. ''Poor Henry!'' say his friends, as they visit at weekends and holidays. ''What an awful life he has!'' But Henry is not at all the sad and disappointed man we might expect him to be. He manages to enjoy life, and indeed, has quite a lot of fun, one way and another ...Mary Wesley''s story takes a sharp but light-hearted look at love, sex, and marriage - and the things people will do to get what they want. There is more than one legacy in British author Wesley''s ( A Sensible Life ) darkly comic, wise and irresistible new novel of manners. Henry Tillotson''s legacy from his dying father is an injunction to help an English divorcee in WW II Egypt. Henry does more than that: he impulsively marries Margaret, to his lifelong regret. For when he returns with her to his country home, she takes to her bed out of pure spite and tries her best to make his life miserable. In an effort to achieve some conviviality, Henry invites two friends, James and Matthew, for a weekend party; each man brings a companion and each proposes marriage. Both women accept, motivated by pragmatism and a need for security. What happens to their marriages, and that of Henry and Margaret, makes up the remainder of the plot. Two couples have children and grandchildren; these are the second legacy, and part of a delicious secret. As usual, Wesley''s picture of the British upper middle class is breezy and irreverent; the dialogue is witty and often astonishingly impertinent (one thinks that the English can be shockingly tactless); the plot is laced with irony; the characters--major and minor--are depicted with a master''s deft hand. But it is in Margaret, whose monstrously selfish, malicious, eccentric behavior exceeds all rational bounds, that Wesley has created her most memorable character. Readers will root for her comeuppance, and will cheer when it arrives. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. Wesley''s world is one of speculation about relationships, gossip, and innuendo. She explores forces that unite and divide friends and lovers. In 1944, Henry Tillotson brings his bride Margaret to his country house, where she takes to