Selected Views of The Cousins' Tale

The Herald on Monday May 10, 1999 (Book of the Day)

THIS is much more a tale of middle class manners and morals and mores than it is of cousins. It tells the intertwining stories of two women in pursuit of their own sort of happiness, attempting to adjust their likes and desires to their lifestyles. Or vice versa. It is light, perceptive, and funny. It is also a surprisingly satisfactory read.
The source of surprise is that one suspects at the outset that this will be an entertaining work of little substance. That sounds cruel, but is a reflection of the reality of the publishing world. There are so many other writers out there now attempting to pull off once again the trick that Joanna Trollope so successfully managed; this looked like the latest.
But, for me, there was a difference. I know the author, who was a neighbour in London before she and her family moved to Scotland a few years ago. Yet my personal interest in her perceptions of the difference between the life she found in Scotland and the one she left behind – a distinction which is a very central feature of the book – was soon forgotten. And that's because she tells a good story. It is interesting and well researched and, yes, even surprising.
She has progressed hugely since her first novel and, in particular, uses metaphor extremely well. She is also a skilful practitioner in the use of zeugma, a little-known grammatical trick of which all pedants (among whom I am numbered) tend to be particularly fond. It means using one verb for two differing nouns, as in "She left in a taxi and high dudgeon". Antonia Swinson does it a lot and to great effect.
The story is about two different women, about their relationships with their families, about their search for their own kinds of happiness. One of them is beautiful and clever and dreamy, unfulfilled and a bit sad; the other has succeeded beyond her or anybody else's dreams as a TV cook. What happens to them is the main body of the story. There is much social satire, a considerable amount of sardonic observation of life both in West London and East Lothian – which should make inhabitants of both laugh at themselves as well as at each other. And that alone would be a considerable achievement.

The Express on Sunday February 14, 1999

"Sarah is the bright cousin: grammar school, art history at university. Bunny is the noisy cousin: secondary mod and a catering course. Sixteen years later, Bunny is now a TV supercook. Sarah is a housewife trying to make ends meet. All they seem to have in common is unsatisfactory husbands and appalling mothers. Alternating between London and Scotland, The Cousins’ Tale is great fun, fast moving, and gripping to the end."

BBC Radio Scotland February 2, 1999
(Flagship arts programme: The Usual Suspects)

Doreen and Marjorie are the triple distilled mothers from hell ... the book has a very dramatic turnaround ... I hope that you will read it."

Scotland on Sunday January 31, 1999

Swinson’s second novel is a light, witty, comedy of manners ... a chowder of clever observations, metaphor, assonance, analogy and idiom ... the contrast between the two ‘realities’ of Scotland and London sensibilities is nicely handled, as are the outlook and economics between the Seventies and the Nineties

The Times January 23, 1999

"... Swinson’s very readable tale rattles along nicely, with plenty of surprises to keep the reader’s interest."

Sunday Times January 17, 1999

"Could be described as an Aga saga with a Scottish accent...yet it has a universally appealing theme in that it deals with the need to ...’find yourself in 1970’s speak at a certain stage in your life...Swinson poses the question of what price you should pay to keep the status quo intact, the Aga glowing. The answer is not what we expect and the novel ends shockingly."

Antonia Swinson writing about her novel The Cousins’ Tale in The Mail on Sunday 15 November 1998

After a year [back in Scotland], I started writing my own impressions in a satirical novel about a Bedford Park banker and his wife, off-loading London stress and moving to wild and beautiful East Lothian. As my characters fought to adapt to their new life, so I , walking along the beach to school each day with my two children, realised that we had, in fact, rather unexpectedly emigrated ...

Press Release from Hodder & Stoughton

The Cousins' Tale by Antonia Swinson, published by Hodder & Stoughton on the 21 January, 1999 • Price £16.99

The Cousins' Tale explores the role of men, money and mothers in women's lives in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

Bunny Halifax is a TV celebrity cook and catering superstar. Sarah Todd is a beautiful, intelligent graduate housewife. Teenagers in the seventies, the novel follows their lives as they grow from teenagers without a template in the seventies, into confused women living the prescribed realities of the nineties. The Cousins' Tale is set in London and Scotland and takes place in the context of an increasingly splintering Union.

In Sarah, the book explores the pain of relocation from London to the east coast of Scotland after facing financial meltdown. In Bunny, the cousin who stays on, we see the pressures of keeping a high voltage London life on track. Funny and fast-moving, The Cousins' Tale peels away our most cherished pretensions to reveal the bottom line, where keeping up with the Jones' is a fin-de-siecle recipe for middle-class madness.

ANTONIA SWINSON is a newspaper columnist and journalist. She writes a witty weekly column on the financial aspects of middle class life for Scotland on Sunday. The Cousins' Tale is a fictionalised expresion of her conviction that money, and how we manage it, still shapes all our destinies.

Antonia Swinson is married with two children and lives in East Lothian. She is available for interview

The Cousins' Tale will be launched on publication day (21 January) at James Thin in Edinburgh.

Hodder & Stoughton Publishers • 338 Euston Road • LONDON • NW1 3BH

Synopsis of The Cousins' Tale (Paperback Edition)

'A light witty comedy of manners. The prose Is a chowder of clever observations, metaphor and idiom. The contrast between the two realities' of Scottish and London sensibilities is nicely handled.' (Scotland on Sunday)

The Cousins' Tale by Antonia Swinson Publication: 17 June 1999 Flame paperback £6.99

Sarah and Bunny are cousins, best friends and rivals. Bunny is charismatic, confident and larger than life. Sarah is beautiful, intelligent and artistic. In The Cousins' Tale, Antonia Swinson's entertaining new novel, she traces the course of their lives from their childhood in Surrey to men, marriage, mortgages and, ultimately, liberation,

Sarah goes to Scotland to study art history at St. Andrews and Bunny goes into the hotel business. At university Sarah falls in love with ceramist Archie Milne Robertson, who died in 1938, while Bunny becomes a sloaney chef in London and meets Edward, her husband, at a director's lunch. Sarah marries a divorced banker, Christopher and produces two children.

When finances become tight Sarah is packed off to Scotland where she buys a house at auction which was once home to Archie Mime Robertson. She has to adlust to the pain of downshifting, relocation and an increasingly absent husband.

Bunny, now a TV celebrity chef with her own cookery school, is having problems with her daughter and her husband, and longs to escape from the pressure of a high-voltage London lifestyle.

The cousins are re-united when Bunny goes to stay with Sarah in Scotland and events lead them to re-evaluate their lives. Funny and fast-moving, The Cousins' Tale is the perfect summer read.

'Very readable ... with plenty of surprises to keep the reader's interest.' (The Times)

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Visit us again on http://www.antoniaswinson.co.uk or e-mail antonia swinson

Antonia at the James Thin Book Launch on
21 January, 1999
Edinburgh (Scotland)

"The gags torrent out enjoyably thick and fast"

The Scotsman
13 February 1999

SARAH is a mousy put-upon housewife, her cousin Bunny a feisty and fêted TV supercook. But it wasn't always thus – and might not always remain so. Antonia Swinson's tale of two cousins follows its subjects from deepest Surrey to darkest East Lothian, through 30-odd years of alternating competition and camaraderie and of seesawing, fortunes on the personal, professional and financial fronts. The Cousins' Tale can at times read more like a stream of jokes than a novel, but the gags do torrent out enjoyably thick and fast, and Sarah and Bunny's story is always just about vivid enough to be believed. Swinson's humour is much less
frothy than it seems at first, moreover, with some sharp swipes
at the fraudulence of the post-feminist settlement, the thanklessness of motherhood, the uselessness (at best) of men, and the more portentous pieties of
contemporary Scottish culture.

Relative Values Bared

Peter Dundy
(Newcastle Journal)

This is a book that was waiting to be written. It tells us where the whole merry dance of modern life can lead.

Starting as a meeting, or
rather a dash, between the class known as downshifters and the ambitious (but not necessarily capable) known as the upwardly mobile, its points of contact between the two are TV studios, international banks, art galleries and the suburbs of London.

In short, the world
artificial, the poseur and
those dedicated to oneupmanship.

But the short term is not
what concerns Antonia Swinson. She Invents two cousins, Sarah and Bunny, at once best friends and rivals, to steer us through a world that proved to be a hilarious adventure in modern styles and manners.

Bunny although a TV celebrity cook, somehow manages not to enjoy a good meal. Cousin Sarah, is a beauty who falls in love with a Scot, the only drawback being that he died in 1938.

The author is a journalist who Is well qualified to record such antics, for she writes for
the City and several Scottish newspapers.

As well as a sharp eye and an analytical mind, she has understandlng and compassion for people many of us would be tempted to dismiss as sad failures.

As a commentary on modern life, the book Is witty shrewd and
penetrating.

Who could fail to recognise a typically modern man in the
following: Christopher embraced his new job in the way only a man could who had two families, eight credit cards, a large overdraft and a £340,000 mortgage?

"Excellent and unusual cover design ... lots of interesting details about ceramics"

('The Bookseller')