Intimate Friends

by Charlotte Vale Allen

After her husband's suicide, TV producer Lynne Craig's world is upended. There is no evident reason for this act, and she's left to try to come to terms with her husband's death while continuing to function in the cutthroat world of 1960's television. Wearied by the politics, the infighting, and the unfairness of a network that places a low premium on women, she starts her life again in a tiny cottage in Connecticut and commutes into New York to a job that, daily, means less and less to her. To her bewilderment, she finds herself involved with two men--one older, one much younger. And just when it seems that she and Dianna, the on-air host, might finally get a chance to do a meaningful segment on Up To The Minute, their 60-minute weekly show, Dianna mysteriously disappears.

Genres: Fiction

327 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published March 5, 1983

About the author

Charlotte Vale-Allen was born in Toronto and lived in England from 1961 to 1964 where she worked as a television actress and singer. She returned to Toronto briefly, performing as a singer and in cabaret revues until she emigrated to the United States in 1966.

Shortly after her marriage to Walter Allen in 1970 she began writing and sold her first novel Love Life in 1974. Prior to this book's publication she contracted to do a series of paperback originals for Warner Books, with the result that in 1976 three of her books appeared in print.

Her autobiography, the acclaimed Daddy's Girl, was actually the first book she wrote but in 1971 it was deemed too controversial by the editors who read it. It wasn't until 1980, after she'd gained success as a novelist, that the groundbreaking book was finally published.

One of Canada's most successful novelists, with over seven million copies sold of her 30+ novels, Ms. Allen's books have been published in all English-speaking countries, in Braille, and have been translated into more than 20 languages.

In her writing she tries to deal with issues confronting women, being informative while at the same time offering a measure of optimism. "My strongest ability as a writer is to make women real, to take you inside their heads and let you know how they feel, and to make you care about them."

A film buff and an amateur photographer, Allen enjoys foreign travel. She finds cooking and needlework therapeutic, and is a compulsive player of computer Solitaire. The mother of an adult daughter, since 1970 she has made her home in Connecticut.

Reviews

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

A woman learns to love again after the suicide of her husband.