FRIDAY NIGHTS

It''s Eleanor who starts the Friday nights. From her window she sees two young women, with small children, separate, struggling and plainly lonely, and decides to ask them in, and see what happens. What happens is that a group gradually forms, a group of six different and disparate women, who become a circle of friends. They range in age from Jules, who is twenty-two and wants to be a DJ, to Eleanor herself, who is a retired professional and walks with a stick. They include one wife, three mothers, three singletons and five working women. They all of them, variously, value Friday nights. And then one of them meets a man - an enigmatic significant man - and the whole dynamic changes. The bonds that have been so closely forged are tested - and some of them break. With wit and warmth, Joanna Trollope explores the complexities, the sabotages, and the shifting currents of modern friendship.