The Unlikely Adventures of Claudia Faraday

‘It got better, in time, though if she were to be truthful it always felt more of a duty than a pleasure: a little like homework, satisfying when over, and done well, but never exactly enjoyable. But then nobody had ever suggested it could be otherwise.’ This was the view of Claudia Faraday, respectable wife and mother of three, on the subject of sex. That is until an unexpected visit from a colleague of her absent husband’s shakes her out of her torpor in a most surprising, not to say unlikely way, and spurs her to start keeping a diary that has remained hidden for nearly 100 years. The diary reveals a woman venturing into the outside world of the 1920s with a fresh mind and an updated attitude, prompted to re-evaluate the lives of her family and her friends and, ultimately, herself. As she does so she discovers, as Marie Stopes might have said: Approached in the right way, even homework can be fun.