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Split Time
Chick lit meets feminism' in this first humorous novel in the Penny Rushmore trilogy about being stuck in the Sandwich Generation.Penny Rushmore is a typical baby boomer, sandwiched between her warring teenagers and an increasingly dotty mother, whilst running her own business and worrying about a wayward husband, hot flushes and an expanding waistline.Her great-grandmother, a passionate suffragette and temperance advocate, was equally torn between demanding daughters and a dependent mother showing early signs of dementia. When Penny discovers her great-grandmother's letters, she is almost at the end of her tether. Will the words of another woman from another time help Penny deal with having to split her time amongst so many others?
375 pages, Kindle Edition
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About the author
Felicity Price
12 books8 followersFelicity Price is the author of eight romance suspense novels featuring contemporary women. Three also follow the hardships of women struggling to survive in the wild west of colonial New Zealand, showing their descendants how ghosts of the past can influence the future.
Her two children, now adults starting families of their own, have provided a constant source of inspiration for the family situation of the fictional Penny Rushmore (featured in four of the novels), who has recently become a grandma herself.
Gone Tomorrow is Felicity’s ninth novel and the fourth in the bestselling Penny Rushmore series originally published by Random House. She is also the author of a regular online column on Stuff Lifestyle about the professional, social, physical and emotional joys and issues facing older women.
Felicity is also the author of three works of non-fiction, including the biography of motorcycle icon John Britten. All her life, Felicity has been a writer – from doodling in notebooks at the back of science class to the demanding world of daily television, radio, print and magazine journalism.
Felicity has an MA in Creative Writing from the New Zealand Institute of Modern Letters and an MA Honours in English literature.
Other novels by Felicity Price: A Jolt to the Heart, 2014; In Her Mothers’ Shoes, 2012; Head over Heels, 2010; A Sandwich Short of a Picnic, 2008; Split Time, 2006; Call of the Falcon, 2004; No Angel, 2002; Dancing in the Wilderness, 2001
Her two children, now adults starting families of their own, have provided a constant source of inspiration for the family situation of the fictional Penny Rushmore (featured in four of the novels), who has recently become a grandma herself.
Gone Tomorrow is Felicity’s ninth novel and the fourth in the bestselling Penny Rushmore series originally published by Random House. She is also the author of a regular online column on Stuff Lifestyle about the professional, social, physical and emotional joys and issues facing older women.
Felicity is also the author of three works of non-fiction, including the biography of motorcycle icon John Britten. All her life, Felicity has been a writer – from doodling in notebooks at the back of science class to the demanding world of daily television, radio, print and magazine journalism.
Felicity has an MA in Creative Writing from the New Zealand Institute of Modern Letters and an MA Honours in English literature.
Other novels by Felicity Price: A Jolt to the Heart, 2014; In Her Mothers’ Shoes, 2012; Head over Heels, 2010; A Sandwich Short of a Picnic, 2008; Split Time, 2006; Call of the Falcon, 2004; No Angel, 2002; Dancing in the Wilderness, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 10, 2025
Review of two books published in the New Zealand Herald, 23 April 2005
"Flashbacks jar in disparate struggles"
Split Time by Felicity Price
(HarperCollins,$27.95)
A Red Silk Sea by Gillian Ranstead
(Penguin Books, $28)
Reviewed by Philippa Jamieson
These two New Zealand novels could not be more different. It would be uncharitable to say that Split Time is shallow – it's more like a quick splash in a swimming pool. By contrast, A Red Silk Sea requires scuba gear and courage to dive into its turbulent waters.
Split Time is Felicity Price's fourth novel, and the slick style and polished plot reveal the author's experience. The main character, Penny Rushmore, spends much of her life driving round talking on her cellphone. She is being pulled in several directions: between her squabbling teenagers, demanding PR clients, and a mother who is exhibiting the beginnings of Alzheimer's. She is also trying to lose weight, and find out what her husband is up to on his 'working late' nights.
Penny is the classic high-achieving, multi-tasking superwoman who finds it hard to say no or ask for help, and as a result she's not coping. The pace is lively, the dialogue peppy, the story eminently readable, although I felt like shaking Penny because of her lack of assertiveness.
A counterpoint to the main story is a collection of letters that reveal the life of Penny's great-grandmother, who was a leader in the women's suffrage movement. There are some parallels between the two women's lives: the great-grandmother is also squeezed between the demands of children and an ageing mother, but mostly the letters feel disjointed from the main plot, a device rather than an integral part of the story. More could have been made of the family history connection here.
There is little of substance to savour afterwards, but Split Time is well-written for its genre: light, entertaining and satisfying, with minor intrigue and dramas.
However, if you want something to get your teeth into, Gillian Ranstead's A Red Silk Sea is a much more challenging read. Like many first novels, it is ambitious and crowded with characters.
It begins with a dramatic suicide. Laurie's death is the catalyst for her friend Cam to unravel their shared past as teenagers in a small South Auckland community where violence of all kinds was the norm: parents beating up kids, men bashing or raping women, groups of teenagers ganging up on each other, fuelled by alcohol, anger, jealousy or revenge.
There is also a mention of historical violence of that area – a battle at the long-forgotten pā.
Cam and Laurie are drawn together as friends, and share the feeling that the violence all around them is wrong. As soon as they are old enough, they escape to the big smoke, but the legacies of the past continue to haunt them.
Halfway through the book is the story of Laurie's mother Käthe, who spent time in a concentration camp in the war, which explains her reactions to violence years later. Although we see through her eyes during her life in Germany, in New Zealand she more distant in the third person. Like the historical flashback in Split Time [reviewed at the same time], this one is vivid but disconnected from the main story.
The back cover likens this book to Once Were Warriors, and it is just as raw and disturbing, although it doesn't have such a concentrated punch. Gillian Ranstead shows how difficult it is to challenge, or simply to opt out of, the culture of violence, that both Māori and Pākeha are subject to it, and that the way out of it is through dialogue and sharing stories.
I look forward to more from this talented writer.
"Flashbacks jar in disparate struggles"
Split Time by Felicity Price
(HarperCollins,$27.95)
A Red Silk Sea by Gillian Ranstead
(Penguin Books, $28)
Reviewed by Philippa Jamieson
These two New Zealand novels could not be more different. It would be uncharitable to say that Split Time is shallow – it's more like a quick splash in a swimming pool. By contrast, A Red Silk Sea requires scuba gear and courage to dive into its turbulent waters.
Split Time is Felicity Price's fourth novel, and the slick style and polished plot reveal the author's experience. The main character, Penny Rushmore, spends much of her life driving round talking on her cellphone. She is being pulled in several directions: between her squabbling teenagers, demanding PR clients, and a mother who is exhibiting the beginnings of Alzheimer's. She is also trying to lose weight, and find out what her husband is up to on his 'working late' nights.
Penny is the classic high-achieving, multi-tasking superwoman who finds it hard to say no or ask for help, and as a result she's not coping. The pace is lively, the dialogue peppy, the story eminently readable, although I felt like shaking Penny because of her lack of assertiveness.
A counterpoint to the main story is a collection of letters that reveal the life of Penny's great-grandmother, who was a leader in the women's suffrage movement. There are some parallels between the two women's lives: the great-grandmother is also squeezed between the demands of children and an ageing mother, but mostly the letters feel disjointed from the main plot, a device rather than an integral part of the story. More could have been made of the family history connection here.
There is little of substance to savour afterwards, but Split Time is well-written for its genre: light, entertaining and satisfying, with minor intrigue and dramas.
However, if you want something to get your teeth into, Gillian Ranstead's A Red Silk Sea is a much more challenging read. Like many first novels, it is ambitious and crowded with characters.
It begins with a dramatic suicide. Laurie's death is the catalyst for her friend Cam to unravel their shared past as teenagers in a small South Auckland community where violence of all kinds was the norm: parents beating up kids, men bashing or raping women, groups of teenagers ganging up on each other, fuelled by alcohol, anger, jealousy or revenge.
There is also a mention of historical violence of that area – a battle at the long-forgotten pā.
Cam and Laurie are drawn together as friends, and share the feeling that the violence all around them is wrong. As soon as they are old enough, they escape to the big smoke, but the legacies of the past continue to haunt them.
Halfway through the book is the story of Laurie's mother Käthe, who spent time in a concentration camp in the war, which explains her reactions to violence years later. Although we see through her eyes during her life in Germany, in New Zealand she more distant in the third person. Like the historical flashback in Split Time [reviewed at the same time], this one is vivid but disconnected from the main story.
The back cover likens this book to Once Were Warriors, and it is just as raw and disturbing, although it doesn't have such a concentrated punch. Gillian Ranstead shows how difficult it is to challenge, or simply to opt out of, the culture of violence, that both Māori and Pākeha are subject to it, and that the way out of it is through dialogue and sharing stories.
I look forward to more from this talented writer.
April 12, 2009
Another novel that flicks between 2 different time zones this time between modern day NZ and the life of a 40+ married working mother and letters from her grandmother at the time NZ women got the vote. Really enjoyed this book although I am not sure how the author mananged to place listening devices inside my home to capture the arguments my kids have as the teens in this book are having the same arguments!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews