In this outstanding, semi-autographical novel, Mrs Armitage (never given a first name) is the mother of a large brood; some, from previous marriages, have been sent away to boarding school, and she is left desolate and burning with anger. Jake, a successful scriptwriter, then provides his wife with so much household help – staff to do the housekeeping and a nanny to look after the children – that she is left alienated and without purpose. Her unfaithful husband is frustrated with his large family but Mrs Armitage deliberately becomes pregnant yet again; Jake argues for a freer future together and talks her into an abortion and sterilisation. She agrees but, while recovering in hospital, makes a terrible discovery.

'Almost every woman I can think of will want to read this book,' said fellow novelist Edna O'Brien. A 'shattering achievement', said the Telegraph. Over time the novel has been taken more and more seriously, both as good writing – a 'stinging little novel', said the discerning critic Peter Hitchens in 2016 – and very often as an early feminist tract.

Playwright Harold Pinter wrote the screenplay for the famous film of the novel in 1964, which was voted Film of the Year by the Film Critics' Guild and, in the view of celebrated film critic Alexander Walker, was one of the best films ever made.

Books by the
’Angry Young Women’

Shelagh Delaney

Lynne Reid Banks

Penelope Mortimer

Nell Dunn

Margaret Drabble

Margaret Forster

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In the 1950s, depressed middle-aged mother of three Ruth is trapped at home while her selfish husband philanders in London. She badly misses her sons who, thanks to their father, are away at boarding school. Almost on the verge of a nervous breakdown, she must then arrange an abortion for her adult daughter who has escaped to university.

At times hugely funny about life in a commuter-belt village, this intense novel also offers a profound study of female isolation - and an account of the illegal and circuitous road to abortion in the 1950s.

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A 1960s collection of twelve stories about family life. A mother is locked out of the house she has rented for her family’s holiday; a husband and wife quarrel while taking their children for a walk on a windy day; a woman in a nursing home is witness to a dark drama unfolding in the next bed. In the story of the title, wife and mother Madge Browning must arrange each day's entertainment, meals, and expeditions while trying to conciliate a husband ever more irritated by a house heaving with annoying children.

A brilliant and tense account of the passion and despair beneath the surface of everyday existence.

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