Millions Millions

There was no stopping her now. She wrote like a woman possessed, scrawling on the back of old manuscripts and whatever she could find. She had a soft touch for dark themes, offering deception and adultery the same respect as the rest of the natural world they occupied. The only sin she couldn’t forgive her characters was cruelty.

There is something about Mary Wesley’s work that loves a blurb. ‘Jane Austen with sex’ is the one heard most, but you also find ‘arsenic without the old lace,’ ‘upper-middle-brow potboilers,’ and “posh smut.’