Charles Arrowby is an aging theatre director who has decided to retire to a quiet life in a cottage by the sea. Charles’ lifestyle certainly becomes sedentary, with no London newspapers, telephone or TV. He swims, cooks strange gourmet meals for himself, collects beach stones for his garden and keeps a diary of his daily activities. Through this diary, he provides us with an insight into his previous life in London with his eccentric circle of theatrical friends and of his few love affairs.
This quiet idyll is destroyed when he bumps into a stout 60 year old woman in the village and realises that she is ‘Hartley’, his first and only true love. ‘Hartley’ isn’t too happy about their meeting again, and neither is her husband. Charles, however, becomes obsessed with her and what could have been if she had not run away from him and married someone else. He becomes convinced that they are still destined to be together and in a moment of madness Charles kidnaps ‘Hartley’ and locks her up in a room in his cottage.
Matters become worse when his theatrical friends turn up to holiday at the cottage, along with his cousin and Hartley’s runaway adopted son (who tracked Charles down to find out if he might be his real father). There is an attempt on Charles’ life, and one of his visitors drowns, which brings every-one to their senses and together they talk Charles into returning Hartley to her husband.
This was so well written and heaps of fun. Charles’ madness is contagious and you just have to know what he’s going to get up to next.
Ultimately, it is a comic look at love and friendship, but which contains a warning that ’love is blind’ and you should not use your friends/family or take them for granted.
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