What You Will: An Intimate Literary Fiction Novel of Oxford Intellectuals and Secret Affairs

by Katherine Bucknell

An intimate portrait of London intellectual life, the breakdown of a marriage and the friendship between two women, ‘What You Will’ draws the reader into a spellbinding world of beauty and tension.

Gwen, an American painter, lives in London with her English husband, Lawrence, an Oxford don. When Gwen’s friend Hilary arrives from New York bruised by a broken engagement, a lost job and an unsuitable love affair, Gwen is determined to find her someone to marry. But will he be another Oxford intellectual, a member of London's bohemia, or a professional from the scandal-ridden New York museum world?

But with Gwen’s arrival the bonds of friendship, love, and marriage are severely tested. Pressure builds in the household, affecting Gwen and Lawrence’s small son as he struggles to engage with the sophistication and savagery around him.

Tackling deep and unsetttling questions – Are we slaves to our impulses or to one another? Is it possible to have both love and freedom? Can the artist or the intellectual illuminate such questions?, ‘What You Will’ is a subtly wrought, multi-layered, and hypnotically suspenseful tale about how we handle our most intimate relationships.

354 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2007

About the author

Katherine Bucknell was born in Saigon in 1957 and grew up in Washington, D.C. She has degrees from Princeton, Oxford, and Columbia Universities and lives in London with her husband, Bob Maguire, and their three children.

She is the editor of W.H. Auden's Juvenilia: Poems 1922-1928, four volumes of diaries by Christopher Isherwood, and The Animals, a volume of letters between Christopher Isherwood and his partner Don Bachardy. She is co-editor of Auden Studies, a founder of The W.H. Auden Society, and director of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation.

She has published four novels, Canarino, Leninsky Prospekt, What You Will, and +1.

Reviews

[Anni · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reviewed on www.whichbook.net

[Topping & Company Booksellers of Ely]

Intelligent and perceptive exploration of the relationships between an Oxford academic, his American wife who is a painter - and a troubled friend of hers.

Deborah