One Afternoon

Siân James’s novel One Afternoon, is a comfortable, easy read. But this is where the intelligence comes in: the writing is phenomenal – perceptive and clever, marvellous about children, and path-breaking (when the heroine’s lover leaves her and she is pregnant, she has no qualms about bringing up a new baby as well as the three children she already has by her first husband). 

As Susan Hill wrote in The Times in 1975: ‘One Afternoon is... a quiet, gentle book, full of insight and truth... It is about passion, but not simply that; about the many varieties and degrees of human love, filial, maternal, spiritual, sexual, friendly. It is, above all, about that pre-eminently difficult achievement, self-love. I learnt a great deal from this lovingly created, carefully worked-out book, and greatly admired the control, elegance and occasional moments of real beauty of Siân James’s prose. The two last, short paragraphs moved me to tears.’