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London, May 1945. Freya Wyley, twenty, meets Nancy Holdaway, eighteen, amid the wild celebrations of VE Day, the prelude to a devoted and competitive friendship that will endure on and off for the next two decades. Freya, wilful, ambitious, outspoken, pursues a career in newspapers which the chauvinism of Fleet Street and her own impatience conspire to thwart, while Nancy, gentler, less self-confident, struggles to get her first novel published. Both friends become entangled at university with Robert Cosway, a charismatic young man whose own ambition will have a momentous bearing on their lives.
Flitting from war-haunted Oxford to the bright new shallows of the 1960s, Freya plots the unpredictable course of a woman's life and loves against a backdrop of Soho pornographers, theatrical peacocks, willowy models, priapic painters, homophobic blackmailers, political careerists.
Beneath the relentless thrum of changing times and a city being reshaped, we glimpse the eternal: the battles fought by women in pursuit of independence, the intimate mysteries of the human heart, and the search for love. Stretching from the Nuremberg war trials to the advent of the TV celebrity, from innocence abroad to bitter experience at home, 'Freya' presents the portrait of an extraordinary woman taking arms against a sea of political and personal tumult.
While this novel can be read as a stand-alone, it also features some characters from Quinn's highly recommended other novel, ''Curtain Call'' (set in pre-World War 2 times). With a sub-plot involving the continued criminalization of homosexuality in Britain and the outing of a gay MP, there is much to interest a gay reader. Also check out ''Eureka'', Quinn's third book, which is also loosely connected to this book through some characters.
Author: Anthony Quinn
Paperback, 456 paperback, Orig. Publ. 2016, This Ed. Publ. August 2017