Judy Astley has gone one further, taking the characters and setting for her first novel, Just for the Summer, actually written twenty years ago, and writing a new novel, In the Summer Time, which brings their stories up to date.
In Just for the Summer, three families holiday in a Cornish seaside village each year. Clare's daughter, Miranda, has just got herself pregnant with local boy, Steve. Her husband, Jack, is trying to tell her that he wants to leave his lecturing job in Chiswick, and settle them all in Cornwall for good.
Meanwhile, Clare is daydreaming about Irish author, Eliot, who had made a pass at her (deliciously!) in the woods last year, and she's hoping that when he arrives with his wife, Liz, and daughter, Jessica, he may do it again.
The last couple are Archie and Celia with their son, Andrew, who, unlike the others, own their own cottage, and are members of the golf and sailing club which keeps them busy, whilst Andrew indulges in fantasies about Jessica.
Lastly, Jeannie, Steve's mother, represents the views of the local people as she cleans the cottages.
The story plays out about the relationships between the adults, and between the children as the summer progresses.
This is taken up in In the Summer Time. Miranda returns to Cornwall with Clare because Jack has died and wanted his ashes to be scattered at sea near their holiday home. Without giving too much away, eventually, many of the original characters arrive on the scene, and the summer proves to be just as memorable as that one twenty years before.
I thoroughly enjoyed these books which are perfect for holiday reading. I liked the way the stories carried through over the years and I was interested in how Judy's writing style had inevitably changed.
I did manage to speak to her briefly at the RNA Conference 2014, to tell her I was enjoying her books, but as she was due to take part in a panel discussion, I couldn't talk about them any further.
May be one day, I'll get another chance!
