Separate Beds: A Novel Book

To outsiders, Annie and Tom are a middle-aged couple who appear to have it all. Tom works for the BBC World Service and Annie is an Admin manager at a nearby hospital. They have a nice house, three grown up children, two of which are no longer at home. They are, however, a couple in crisis. Tom and Annie have been sleeping in separate beds for a while, ever since unnamed dramatic circumstances years before had resulted in their oldest daughter leaving the house and severing all ties with her family. No-one in the family speaks of the circumstances and the underlying resentment and blame game continues to simmer and influence their present life. Then it all changes in an instant.

Tom comes home and announces that he has been made redundant and that their financial situation will be very dire without severe cutbacks. Their youngest daughter Emily is told they can no longer support her and she has to find a job; Tom's elderly mother has to move in with them as they can no longer affords to keep her in her nursing home; and then their son Jake is abandoned by his wife and returns home with his one year old daughter. Tom and Annie now have a full house and have to share a bedroom again. Can they survive with four generations under one roof? Can they build bridges over the past and grab another chance at happiness if it is at all possible?

Elizabeth Buchan knows what it is like to be an older woman in a youth focused world. SEPARATE BEDS is a book to settle down and really enjoy, it is clever and perceptive fiction, with completely believable situations. This is a snapshot on the life of a real family dealing with true-to-life problems which have affected many other families. It is not all happiness and fluff, but it is not all doom and gloom either, there are failures, there are successes, there are many bad times to get through before better ones can start.