Buchan, Elizabeth 1948- (Elizabeth Mary Buchan)

PERSONAL:

Born 1948, in Guildford, Surrey, England; daughter of Peter Charles (an army officer) and Eleanor (a homemaker) Oakleigh-Walker; married Benjamin Buchan (a publisher), April 20, 1974; children: Adam, Eleanor. Ethnicity: "British." Education: University of Kent—Canterbury, B.A. (with honors), 1971. Politics: "Floating." Hobbies and other interests: Walking, opera, gardening, theater.

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer. Penguin Books, cover editor, 1971-88; Random House, London, England, commissioning fiction editor, 1988-93.

MEMBER:

British Society of Authors (management committee member, 1999-2003).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Parker Romantic Novel of the Year award, Romantic Novelists' Association, 1994, for Consider the Lily.

WRITINGS:

FICTION; EXCEPT AS NOTED

Beatrix Potter: The Story of the Creator of Peter Rabbit (biography), Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1987.

Daughters of the Storm, Macmillan (London, England), 1988, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1990.

Light of the Moon, Macmillan (London, England), 1991.

Consider the Lily, Crown Publishers (New York, NY), 1993.

Perfect Love, Macmillan (London, England), 1995, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1999.

Against Her Nature, Macmillan (London, England), 1997.

Secrets of the Heart, Penguin (London, England), 2000.

Revenge of the Middle-aged Woman, Penguin (London, England), 2002, Viking (New York, NY), 2003.

The Good Wife, Penguin (London, England), 2003, published as The Good Wife Strikes Back, Viking (New York, NY), 2004.

That Certain Age, Penguin (London, England), 2004, published as Everything She Thought She Wanted, Viking (New York, NY), 2005.

The Second Wife (sequel to Revenge of the Middle-aged Woman), Michael Joseph (London, England), 2006, published as Wives Behaving Badly, Viking (New York, NY), 2006.

OTHER

Contributor of short stories and reviews to periodicals, including Good Housekeeping.

ADAPTATIONS:

Secrets of the Heart was adapted for audio cassette, read by Eve Matheson, Chivers Press; Consider the Lily was adapted for audio cassette, read by Lindsay Duncan, HarperCollins, 1995; Daughters of the Storm was adapted for audio cassette, read by Lindsay Duncan, HarperCollins, 1996; Light of the Moon was adapted for audio cassette (twelve cassettes), read by Stella Gonet, Chivers Audio Books, 1996; Perfect Love was adapted for audio cassette, Chivers Audio Books, 1996; an unabridged version of Against Her Nature was adapted for audio cassette, read by Stella Gonet, Chivers Audio Books, 1998; an unabridged version of Revenge of the Middle-aged Woman was adapted for audio cassette and CD, read by Jean Gilpin, Penguin Audiobooks, 2003; The Second Wife was adapted for audio cassette and CD, read by Emma Fielding, Orion, 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

English writer Elizabeth Buchan is the author of several novels featuring strong female protagonists and realistic, unsentimental plots. She began her publishing career, however, with the 1987 title, Beatrix Potter: The Story of the Creator of Peter Rabbit, a biography for children that delves into Potter's childhood, including facts about her family, childhood pets, friends, and her happiness living on her farm with her husband, William Heelis. Since then, she has concentrated solely on fiction.

Buchan's first novel, Daughters of the Storm, takes place during the French Revolution. The second, Light of the Moon, set in 1940, finds the protagonist, Evelyn St. John, being recruited as a secret agent, a path that leads to love with a German intelligence officer.

Consider the Lily is set in England during the 1930s and 1940s. Plain Matty Verral was orphaned as a child and raised in London by her aunt, Susan Chudleigh, whose own daughter, Daisy, is beautiful and vivacious. Both young women fall for Kit Dysart, a handsome but poor Englishman they meet while on holiday in the south of France, and it is Daisy to whom Kit responds. But Daisy has no fortune, and when Matty offers to share hers with Kit if he will marry her, he agrees. Matty also tells him he is free to lead his own life, which includes his continued obsession with Daisy. They move to Kit's beautiful family home, where Matty, who discovers she cannot conceive, occupies herself by renovating the abandoned garden. It is in the garden that Matty has occasional visions of a ghostlike child, and as time passes, hidden family secrets begin to surface.

A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote that Consider the Lily contains an "absorbing romance, well-drawn, sympathetic characters, vivid evocation of the beauties of English gardens and country houses—plus a nice filip of the supernatural." According to a Books reviewer, Consider the Lily is "a haunting love story played out between three people and woven into the life of an English country house" that "celebrates marriage, and coming to terms with loss. It rejoices in flowers and their history. Unusual and poignant, this is a beautiful novel of England between the wars that will enchant readers of Elizabeth Jane Howard and more: It will put a new definition on the ‘romantic novel.’"

In Perfect Love, forty-one-year-old Prue Valour is married to a man twenty years her senior. She and Max have a child, and she has led a contented life in their village, caring for her family and writing a biography of Joan of Arc. The calm is shattered when Max's daughter, Violet, returns from the United States with her husband, Jamie, and their baby. Violet, who dominates Jamie, has never accepted Prue, and does not even care for her own child. Jamie and Prue, who are close in age, become attracted, and their affair brings Prue sexual satisfaction she has never before experienced.

A Publishers Weekly critic said that "the often stifling responsibilities of marriage and family life and the lure and complications of adultery are subtly and movingly explored." Furthermore, the reviewer noted that in showing how a woman goes on after the passion of marriage is gone, Buchan "avoids sentimentality and easy answers."

Revenge of the Middle-aged Woman is Buchan's tale of Rose Lloyd, devoted wife of Nathan and mother of two children in their twenties. Rose is a book editor for a London newspaper, and Nathan is deputy editor of a paper owned by the same group. Nathan has an affair with Rose's young assistant, Minty, whom Rose has mentored and befriended. Rose loses her husband, her job, and the house into which she has put so much care and love. Her mother suggests that she did not pay enough attention to Nathan, and her daughter, Poppy, is furious with her father. Rose's severance pay will carry her for a little while, but too much time alone leads her to seek solace in alcohol.

Robin Vidimos reviewed Revenge of the Middle-aged Woman for the Denver Post, writing that "it would be easy to turn Rose's story into a fantasy of revenge, like Fay Weldon's The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, or a feminist awakening along the lines of The Women's Room by Marilyn French. But what makes Buchan's take on the situation so appealing is that she sidesteps the expected plot devices."

Instead of seeking revenge, for example, Rose tends to her garden and to relationships with friends and neighbors who need her. An old love reenters her life in the form of American Hal Thorne, now a well-known travel writer. Vidimos described Rose as a "three-dimensional woman, not a stereotype, and she's a character that grows on the reader while she grows into a new stage of her life." Rose also visits Paris, buys new clothes, and becomes friends with a cabinet minister who is facing problems of his own.

USA Today contributor Deirdre Donahue wrote: "Women who love gardens and felines will find this book absolute catnip" and felt that "to Buchan's credit, Nathan's quest for happiness is treated neither as laughable, incomprehensible, nor pathetically goatish. Instead, it is an inchoate expression of an authentic yearning for something new before old age, the walker, and death." A Kirkus Reviews contributor called Revenge of the Middle-aged Woman "a wry and elegant tale about a woman of a certain age fighting back and winning unexpected victories."

Buchan presents another woman in marital crisis with The Good Wife Strikes Back. For two decades Fanny Savage has been a devoted wife to Will, member of Parliament and a demanding mate whose professional life requires that domestic arrangements are geared around his needs. She has always been the supportive one, and her marriage has, over the years, become restricting; she has lost her own sense of self as a result. Now several events—including the death of Fanny's father, a possible high ministerial post for Will, and the reappearance of an old lover from Fanny's past—conspire to make this good wife consider some hard decisions. Reviewing this 2003 novel in Booklist, Meredith Parets praised Buchan's "note-perfect observations on marriage and its uncertain rewards [which] have a revealing freshness" A Publishers Weekly reviewer was less positive, however, noting that though the author "crafts beautiful sentences" and makes at times a "thoughtful and intelligent effort," still the novel as a whole "fails to convey the excitement of the events in Fanny's consciousness." Nancy Pearl, writing in Library Journal, had similar reservations, complaining of "too many one-dimensional characters, too many subplots that go nowhere, and too much uninspired prose." On the other hand, a Kirkus Reviews critic was far more positive, noting that the author "agreeably celebrates a middle-aged woman's use of guile and smartness … in taking back her life." The same reviewer called this book "another winner."

In Everything She Thought She Wanted Buchan focuses on two women of a certain age in very different time periods. Set contemporaneously, the story of thirty-five-year-old Siena, a successful fashion consultant, explores the themes of career versus family. Siena's husband, Charlie, is ready to have a family and leave the city for the pleasures of country living. Siena, however, despite the ticking of her biological clock, is not yet ready to give up her career. Juxtaposed to this story is that of forty-two-year-old Barbara, a mother of two and a devoted wife of a pilot. Barbara's tale is set in 1959 with ensuing societal differences. Into Barbara's quiet life comes Alexander, a young student with whom Barbara has an affair. A Publishers Weekly contributor praised the author's "warm writing and her realistic portrayal of the choices women continue to face," but also felt the two stories were "awkwardly juxtaposed." Roberta O'Hara, reviewing the novel in Bookreporter.com, also noted the strained paring of stories, but found more to like in the novel: "The two [stories] intersect only briefly, and perhaps unnecessarily, at the end of the book, but what they share in common is universal." Jennifer Baker, reviewing Everything She Thought She Wanted in Booklist, had further praise, noting that Buchan infused her paired tales with "just the right blend of heartfelt feminism and humor."

Buchan revisits the characters from her novel Revenge of the Middle-aged Woman in Wives Behaving Badly. Here she picks up the story seven years later and tells it from Minty's point of view. Now a mother of two, she has come to the realization that being wife number two was not all that she expected. She returns to her career in television production, but now there are younger people competing with her. Nathan's ex-wife Rose also comes back into their lives with unexpected results. Writing in Booklist, Elizabeth Dickie offered a mixed assessment of the novel, concluding: "Not as heartwarming as the first installment, but no less involving." A contributor to Publishers Weekly was more positive, noting that "readers who appreciate Buchan's blend of humor and poignancy will find a trove of it." O'Hara, writing in the Bookreporter.com, similarly thought the novel "is successful in that it reminds us that getting what you want doesn't always prove to be a happy ending—especially if getting what you want is something that belongs to someone else."

Buchan once told CA: "Without a doubt, childhood shapes a writer, and mine, without piling on too much agony, was just right for the nurturing of a writer, as I was lonely, cross, and hungry at a boarding school, because my parents lived abroad. Reading anything and everything was a natural recourse, and I determined that I, too, would be this grand and wonderful thing: a writer. However, I sensed that I was the sort of person who would benefit from patience and observation, and I would have to wait in order to find the powers.

"This I did until my youngest child was five or six. Only then did I sit down at the typewriter and embark on the long, perilous, complicated, but intensely interesting and exciting journey of learning to write. Put at its simplest, I wanted to write the books that I would like to read. Put more boldly, I wanted to create books that have an afterlife, which climb up into the reader's head and take root after the final page has been read. I wanted to be nourished, provoked, entertained, and educated in the widest sense and to be given comfort and pleasure, as well as stimulus. This is a tall order and with each book, I try to achieve these objectives."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 1999, Ellie Barta-Moran, review of Perfect Love, p. 1789; January 1, 2003, Carrie Bissey, review of Revenge of the Middle-aged Woman, p. 844; December 1, 2003, Meredith Parets, review of The Good Wife Strikes Back, p. 645; February 1, 2005, Jennifer Baker, review of Everything She Thought She Wanted, p. 938; July 1, 2006, Elizabeth Dickie, review of Wives Behaving Badly, p. 27.

Books, March-April, 1993, review of Consider the Lily, p. 10.

Bookseller, June 16, 2006, "Buchan: The Second Wife," p. 12.

Denver Post, February 9, 2003, Robin Vidimos, review of Revenge of the Middle-aged Woman.

Detroit Free Press (Detroit, MI), March 30, 2005, Marta Salij, review of Everything She Thought She Wanted.

Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 1993, review of Consider the Lily, p. 951; December 1, 2002, review of Revenge of the Middle-aged Woman, p. 1713; November 1, 2003, review of The Good Wife Strikes Back, p. 1284; January 1, 2005, review of Everything She Thought She Wanted, p. 5; April 15, 2005, "Best Books for Reading Groups," p. S1.

Library Journal, January, 2004, Nancy Pearl, review of The Good Wife Strikes Back, p. 152.

Publishers Weekly, August 23, 1993, review of Consider the Lily, p. 59; June 21, 1999, review of Perfect Love, p. 54; December 23, 2002, review of Revenge of the Middle-aged Woman, p. 46; January 12, 2004, review of The Good Wife Strikes Back, p. 38; February 7, 2005, review of Everything She Thought She Wanted, p. 42; May 1, 2006, review of Wives Behaving Badly, p. 36.

Times (London, England), May 24, 1995, Julia Llewellyn Smith, "The Over Forties Want to Be Allowed to Have Sex Lives Too," p. 15.

USA Today, February 12, 2003, Deirdre Donahue, review of Revenge of the Middle-aged Woman.

ONLINE

Bookreporter.com,http://www.bookreporter.com/ (January 22, 2007), Roberta O'Hara, reviews of Revenge of the Middle-aged Woman, Everything She Thought She Wanted, and Wives Behaving Badly.

Elizabeth Buchan Home Page,http://www.elizabethbuchan.com (January 22, 2007).

Penguin Putnam Web site,http://www.penguinputnam.com/ (June 30, 2003), interview with Buchan.