GRACE UNDER PRESSURE
Grace Under Pressure
Tracy Culleton
Italian Rights: Newton Compton
All other rights available
Grace Devlin is 34 and is chafing under her middle-class, middle-of-the-road, heading-for-middle-age life. She’s disillusioned with her husband Dev: he’s boring, has let himself go, is content with this half-nothing life, hardly seems to see her or appreciate her. They’re always having petty niggly rows.
Meanwhile, her friend Cara is having man-trouble too. Her father’s betrayal left her with a deep mistrust of men, and ironically she always seems to attract the untrustworthy ones. But as the story opens she has just got it together with Cormac, who’s dependable and trustworthy if a bit earnest. She’s thinking that she might just stick with him, even though the spark isn’t there, because she’s at that dangerous age and dependable is good.
Grace begins working as a holistic therapist in a trendy gym, and meets and falls for her boss, the luscious Darius O’Neill. They begin an affair consisting only of sexual encounters in her treatment room. However, Grace builds it up in her head to be a grand love affair. Needless to say, there are rather disastrous consequences.
When Grace and Dev split up, we learn that a lot of what Grace told us wasn’t exactly the whole story. For example, she has been complaining about how Dev has put on weight ever since he stopped playing rugby – but as he points out, he stopped playing rugby because she didn’t like him playing it. She also realises – now that it’s too late – just how much she loves him.
Around this time Cara and Cormac split up. Cormac wants to go down to Ciltubber in Co. Cork to work there – an eco-village has just been built and he’s a horticulturist tired of doing up the gardens of spoilt middle-class city-dwellers. He wants Cara to go with him but she just won’t leave Dublin. The idea of being in a relationship is hugely appealing to her, but just how much is she willing to compromise? Is she really in love with Cormac after all?
After a lot of thinking, Grace realises that she has behaved ridiculously and that was mad to give up marriage to a wonderful man. She sets about trying to get him back – which, of course, is nowhere near as easy as she had imagined.
As we follow the dilemmas of these two women, we learn a lot about ourselves.
Tracy Culleton's first novel, Looking Good, beat over 1000 other entries to win a national 'Write a Bestseller' competition in Ireland in 2003, complete with national TV and media coverage. It was subsequently published by Poolbeg and spent 2 weeks in the Irish bestseller charts. Her second novel, Loving Lucy, was published in 2004 and her third, More than Friends, in September 2005, reaching no 4 in the bestseller charts.
Tracy writes page-turning commercial women's fiction with a characteristically Irish light humour, exploring the fundamental issues affecting women everywhere: love, marriage, family and friendship. Her characters are young urban professionals who face and overcome dilemmas in their lives which all women can relate to.
www.tracyculleton.com
