Accommodating Molly Hardcover – 13 Feb 1989

Molly Almond works in a small bookshop in central London. It resembles the study of an absent-minded, dusty don. Mick Winter, its endearing owner, admires his assistant for her talent for giving new books a come-hither look in the window. He admires her in many other ways, too.Nick lives with Georgia in a rambling house in Hammersmith. She wants to tidy his bookish clutter, he says it adds to the quality of his life.Molly's own lover is Dominic, an elusive character to whom she is perhaps a little too accommodating.Not far away Helen Hardy, unmarried and in her early forties, indulges in two passions in her all-white flat: A.E. Housman (about whom she is writing a biography) and cooking wondrous puddings. The puddings are mostly for Nick.In their various pursuits of love these reflective characters are often troubled by feelings that are unrequited. They experience puzzlement, some desolation and a nightmarish lack of faith in their own desirability. But they are also hard-working, sceptical and above all realistic about happy endings.Candida Crewe takes a wry, sly look at at love as it is today and the age-old battle between the sexes. Set in and around the London literary scene, which she observes with a knowing and mischievious eye, Accommodating Molly is a sad, wise and funny book about man's inhumanity to women.