Gingerbread Husbands

by Barbara Else

A touching, tender and witty novel about men and women and family life.

Sophie Redlove has a crumbling Gothic mansion to restore, three children to manage, a distraught friend - as well as possums in the laundry at midnight. She loves her absent husband, Russell - but there's an importunate older man who's after her, a slightly sycophantic younger one, an angel and a Viking on the scene . . . And what the hell is Russell up to? And indeed what's the story in Sophie's gradually uncovered past that explains her dependence on those mysterious and vulnerable creatures - men?

This enthralling novel takes a touching, tender and witty look at men and women and family life in the nineties, as Sophie struggles with the increasing chaos in her life.

274 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Barbara Else is a playwright and fiction writer, and has also worked as a literary agent, editor and fiction consultant. Else won the Victoria University Writer’s Fellowship in 1999, and was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature in 2005.

Reviews

[Elaine Reese · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved it! Great characters and a wonderfully zany plot, studded with nuggets of wisdom. If you like Lucille Ball, you will love Sophie Redlove.

[Gillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the chaotic ending. What atmospheric writing. Just a point though; baby guinea pigs are not born naked. They are little balls of fluff with eyes open, and can run around as soon a they are born.