A new novel by Jennifer Johnston is, of course, an event. A prolific author, Johnston hit the literary headlines in the early 1970s with The Captain and the Kings. In 1979 she won the Whitbread Prize for The Old Jest, in which an innocent eighteen-year-old, living in idyllic surroundings by the sea, comes face to face with the dark and murderous events of the Troubles.

Grace and Truth is Johnston’s fourteenth novel. The plot is deceptively simple. Sally, a starry actress, returns home from a tour to find her husband, Charlie, about to depart. Fidelity has never been his strong suit, but this time he leaves her. Our heroine is not blessed with the bosom