London to become a swan after stunning her family with a playful
appearance as a newspaper model girl when she was only 17. Petra's own
attempts to make a life seem always to have left her on the fringe of
things, confused and used. A conventional marriage removed her from her
family, but only to recreate the choking domesticity of her childhood.
Petra is forced to re-examine her relationship with her glamorous
sister, discovering how little she knows about Caroline and the cracks
on the surface that betrayed the greater fissures in what had seemed to
be a carefree jet-setting life.
Counterpointing Petra's memories are the utterly different views and
recollections of her elderly neighbour Frederic, a refugee from Nazi
Germany, and a man whose gentle simplicity conceals a macabre secret.
Annie Bullen deftly captures the atmosphere of the superficially
prosperous but emotionally starved Appleton family, whose daughters have
so much more in common than they have ever supposed...
Annie Bullen was born in Hampshire and still lives there with her two
children. She works as a journalist and Air and Angels is her first
novel.
