The Diaries of Jane Somers with a preface by the author Year First Published: 1984 First Published by: Vintage Category: Novel This Edition: American first edition (in one volume) softcover original ISBN: 0-394-72955-2

From the book jacket:

These two sensitive and highly contemporary novels, about the inexplicable nature of human relationships, center around Jane Somers, ostensibly their author, a handsome, fashionable middle-aged woman, the editor of a successful woman's magazine. Since the death of her husband - with whom she seldom had any serious communication and for whom she hardly grieved - she has felt emotionally disconnected. By chance, in the local pharmacy, she meets Maudie, a skinny, tattered, dirty scrap of humanity in her eighties, possessed of a fierce and indomitable pride. The Diary of A Good Neighbour is the story of the extraordinary friendship that develops between the two and the transforming effect it has on both. If the Old Could... continues the story of Jane when other changes once again dislocate her life and she most improbably falls in love with a man she literally meets on the street. The realization of the voice and the very essence of Jane is one of the author's considerable achievements.

• The Diary of A Good Neighbour
  
• If the Old Could...

Also see:

• British Edition
  
• The film: Rue Du Retrait

Note: A slightly shorter version of the Preface and an excerpt, "Jane Somer's Diaries," appeared in Granta, Autumn 1984.