Transita Authors - Adrienne Dines

Adrienne Dines was born in Dublin in 1959, which qualifies her as a 'woman of a certain age' today. She is very proud of this fact.

She graduated from Trinity College, Dublin in 1981 and moved to Weybridge, Surrey to teach in a convent school. Marriage to a BP oilman saw her packed off to Aberdeen for ten years where she taught in a variety of secondary schools, wrote poetry and speeches and gave birth to three sons.

Now back in Weybridge, she is a contributor to parish and diocesan publications and a member of the American Women of Surrey Writers' Group. She is still a speechwriter - for world champion canoeists, social functions and even ordinations. Many of her speeches are delivered in verse as it affords her the freedom to 'blame it on the rhyme'.

Toppling Miss April is her second novel and was written in response to the observation that her first, which is about a nun, didn't have naughty bits.

Toppling Miss April by Adrienne Dines

ISBN 1-905175-124 Price £7.99

Available August 2005

Read an extract from the book here

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‘Monica Moran was not the woman she used to be. Or rather she was not just the woman she used to be. She was at least one other woman as well and their combined weight sat heavily on her overburdened bones. Where her breasts had been generous twenty years ago, they were now magnanimous, munificent… If that cleavage was any closer to the ground you could stand a bicycle in it.’

Synopsis

Twenty years ago, when Father Barry ruled the Tullabeg roost, Bernadette Teegan and Monica Moran vied for his attention. Life was a maelstrom of mixed emotions and misplaced extremities – two young girls with plenty to learn. Then Monica went away and life settled down.

Now Monica is back.

And Bernadette has no intention of making hers a happy visit. She has plans – to snare the most eligible bachelor in town, Cormac Hegarty, Estate Agent, and keep nephew Michael’s soul (and overalls) spotless.

But Monica has plans too.

A comedy of errors, misdirection and cross-wired agendas, Toppling Miss April is a triumph of flesh over fantasy, when menopause is just a pause between men and experience counts for everything.

‘A melange of hilarious misunderstandings and risqué innuendo, which makes it a pleasure to read.’

‘A laugh-out-loud screwball comedy featuring lust, mistaken identity and knitting. This is humour sized 44FF: uncontainably funny.’

'At last - a REAL book for real women who've lived long enough to know that love is never perfect. This funny-sad Irish novel will restore your faith in human nature and make you realise that the wobbly bits don't matter!'

‘Lizzie untied the raffia and one end of the box eased open. She tipped the contents onto the table and spread them out. The pieces were beautiful, tiny, intricately shaped. The backs of them were wood, in this case beech, finely cut so that they were more like buttons than jigsaw pieces and on the fronts varying shades from black to white. Lizzie held one out to him, puzzled. “What is it?"'

When Jim Nealon walks into Lizzie Flynn’s shop and proposes that she help him make jigsaws, Lizzie agrees. Putting together one person’s memories so that another person can feel part of them seems like a good idea – and a project that she can fit into her humdrum life without making too many changes. She’s about to turn fifty, heading for her first hot flush. She could do with the distraction.

Now the picture that was Lizzie’s life is in the air, swirling around in a thousand pieces and threatening to fall. As she scrambles to put her life back together again, Lizzie realises that it can’t be done. It was never a real picture anyway.

‘A brilliant follow up to Adrienne Dines' debut novel, Toppling Miss April. Well plotted and very enjoyable.’