victory in 1997, and ends five years later. But this is not so much 'state of the nation' as state of our souls, marriages, families, hopes and careers - a sharp and sexy portrait of a dysfunctional group of characters, all different yet connected. There's Nat, failed dramatist and reluctant lecturer, falling for a younger
woman; Anthea, an eco-friendly lost soul obsessed with foxes; Libby, hardworking mother and advertising executive, the family breadwinner; Harry, Nat's friend and ex-pupil, a journalist on a local paper, with a guilty secret of his own; and Jack, Nat's blimpish but unexpectedly poignant uncle, who lives for fox-hunting, and runs a failing engineering company in East Anglia. Beneath the bright familiar world of Blair's Britain, there's a dark undertow of political and personal disillusion, of mythologies and urban myths that circle round our apparently comfortable lives. ""South of the River"", is a tale of five people, two rivers, and many Englands, metropolitan and rural,
black and white, is gloriously readable and brimming with art and life."
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