Alice has everything she could possibly want in life: a steady husband, three delightful children, loving in-laws, and now a new and gorgeous house ... and yet something is missing.

This is the story of how she 'wakes up' and finds, most unexpectedly, what she needed. Yet she finds that what she wants most leads to great difficulties and stresses.

A controversial subject, movingly explored. Recommended. ( )

What a tremendously suprising novel. I'd read a few other by Joannna Trollope with church connections and enjoyed them very much. This appears, at first, to be about a woman, married and floundering a bit in life, who will find herself but becomes something much more. The ending had a strangely moralistic streak, though, after so much of Helen awakening and finding herself.

Alice is listless and depressed after the birth of her third child, but the purchase of a wonderful new home in a much-desired village promise a new outlook. And the promise delivers, but never in the way anyone expected. I found the characterization lovely and well done in some cases - Alice, Martin and Cecily in particular. I never seemed to get a clear understanding of Clodagh, but perhaps that's intentional by Trollope, or perhaps it's a personal barrier. I loved the deft descriptions of the English village life.

Alice Jordan is a young wife and mother who ostensibly has everything she has ever wanted in her life: a beautiful house in the quiet little English village of Pitcombe, a dull but well-meaning barrister husband and three adorable young children. Instead of being overjoyed, however, Alice - once an extremely talented artist - is depressed and, since the birth of her children, unable to paint. When she meets Clodagh Unwin - the imperiously wayward daughter of local nobility - Alice's life changes immeasurably.

Clodagh has recently returned from America, supposedly nursing her wounds from a broken love affair. The firm and fast friendship that forms between both women soon turns into something more when Clodagh falls in love with Alice and seduces her. Their burgeoning love affair releases Alice from her depression: she becomes more loving towards her husband and children, is more outgoing toward members of the community, and has found her artistic 'joie de vivre' once again.

However, once the women's clandestine affair is discovered, the villagers become standoffish towards them, Alice's husband is shaken to his core, and Alice will have to make the biggest decision of her life.

This is the third of Joanna Trollope's books that I've read, and I have to say that A Village Affair was one book that I didn't want to end. I really haven't read any of Joanna Trollope's books in quite a while, but have just recently got back into reading her work again. I give this book an A+! and am looking forward to reading more of her books very soon. ( )

actually okay and quite interesting but too slow, too much detail. the writing about the kids is pretty good. ( )