Intimate Strangers - Hardcover

Mead, Juliette

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671537946 ISBN 13: 9780671537944

Publisher: Pocket Books, 1996

Synopsis

Swapping houses for an eight-week summer idyll is an equally attractive proposition to two couples, British and American, eager to experience living on the "other side of the pond." For Christy and Gabe McCarthy, it's an opportunity to soak up English culture and social life in the wild beauty of Wiltshire where houses seem hewn from the earth's subtly hued stones. For Oliver and Maggie Callahan, a North Carolina antebellum house set amid cotton fields and a beach retreat on a small barrier island represent a journey into the exotic American South...where ocean tides seduce the senses, and the gracious culture has remained unchanged for over a hundred years.
Easily adapting to the Southern way, elegant, witty Oliver charms all the women he meets, drinks bourbon, tells tall tales, and writes his journalist's dispatches on America...while bright and strong-willed Maggie critiques his work, cares for their children, and wonders if she herself will ever write again. Maggie sorely misses Edward Arabin, an antiques auctioneer who appreciates her in a way her husband never has. Still, she can hardly ignore what Oliver has provided: the house of her dreams, money, freedom, shared child care, the best bloody souffle in Britain, and great sex....Reading Oliver's articles in his Wiltshire study, Christy Moore McCarthy feels she has known him forever. Everything she sees and touches and hears is drawing the beautiful, raven-haired Christy closer to him, and further away from her devoted husband, Gabe. A former stockbroker, Christy is a woman who makes decisions, not mistakes. But, after discovering Oliver's unpublished novel about a doomed love affair, she comes upon a sentence that fires her imagination: Making love to her was like being hit by a cyclone, or a storm surge, or some other sort of natural catastrophe from which you can't emerge unscathed...And Christy, for the first time in her life, yearns for passion...pure and perfect passion.

About this title

Reviews

The catalyst: an ad, impulsively placed with the Worldwide Home Exchange Club by British journalists Maggie and Oliver Callahan of Brockhampton House in Wiltshire. The next step: an impulsive reply from Christy and Gabe McCarthy of Oak Ridge, an almost plantation-sized house in rural North Carolina. The result: a seemingly innocent eight-week house swap that will end in the destruction of both marriages. The Callahans know something is amiss in their marriage?Oliver is a compulsive liar with a habit of adultery, and Maggie loathes the fact that her chauvinistic husband has begun to consider her just a housewife. When, on the eve of their departure for America, Oliver disappears to London, Maggie retaliates by sleeping with their closest friend, antique auctioneer Edward Arabin. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, attorney Gabe McCarthy adores his wife and young son but fears that Christy sometimes finds him boring. A justifiable suspicion, for Christy arrives in England in search of an emotion that will be "dangerous and awful." When she stumbles upon an unfinished novel, A Sad Affair, in Oliver's study, Christy is certain she's found the man who can fulfill the fantasy. Then, "a freak combination of a stray cat, a milk bottle, and a prank doorbell ringer" brings Oliver back to London and into Christy's waiting dreams. British-American writer Mead's bright and engaging novel of love, manners and temptation succeeds in being sensual without relying on gratuitous sex, and finishes with a surprising epilogue that promises a real shock for the obsessed Christy when the true authorship of A Sad Affair is revealed. Literary Guild alternate.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Christy and Gabe McCarthy appear to be the perfect couple. They live in Oak Ridge, an antebellum North Carolina residence; maintain a beach home; dote upon their only child; and live the upscale life that is featured in Southern Living. Maggie and Oliver Callahan live in a 19th-century family manse in Wiltshire, England, have two children, and fight often due to Oliver's infidelities and Maggie's unfulfilled career aspirations. When the two families switch homes for summer vacations, their lives become entangled, and the fault lines in the two marriages widen. Christy falls for Oliver, Maggie has an intimate liaison with friend and neighbor Edward, and Gabe is stunned and aghast. In her debut American novel, Mead smartly explores the saga of modern relationships gone astray but provides a neat and tidy finish for those who love happy endings. For popular fiction collections.?Mary Ellen Elsbernd, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0671537946
• ISBN 13: 9780671537944
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352