Change Of Heart

Barbara Anderson is the bestselling author of seven novels - Girls High, Portrait of the Artist's Wife (winner of the 1992 Wattie Award), All the Nice Girls, The House Guest, Proud Garments, Long Hot Summer and The Swing Around - and two collections of short stories. She lives in New Zealand.

Oliver Gurth Perkins is seventy-five, and the darkest cloud on his horizon is that the local bookshop no longer stocks paperbacks of the Times cryptic crosswords. He has an easy companionship with his wife; his dental practice is undemanding; his son is a decent enough sort; and his granddaughter who comes for the school holidays is his delight. But when a minor heart episode convinces Oliver that it's time for him to take more interest in the lives of those close to him, further shocks are in store- Change of Heart is a glittering jewel of a book, an audacious mixture of comic invention and human insight that is Barbara Anderson at her very best.

Barbara Anderson

New Zealand twenty years ago, when margarine was sold on prescription in pharmacies and protective tariffs ruled- The Minister of Cultural Links and Trade, an ex-dairy farmer called Hamish Carew, sets off on a 'Swing Around' of New Zealand's Asian friends and neighbours. With him are his wife Molly and two young officials, Freddy Manders and Violet Redpath. It should be a routine affair. But Molly doesn't like shopping, Freddy is consumed by bitterness at the wife who left him and the superiors who have sidelined his career, Violet finds herself unexpectedly ready for romance- and lurking on the horizon is the shadowy terrorist group Lightning Storm.

The Swing Around

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