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A gentle look at love, as it ages, batted about and corrupted by the passage of time, as long-held fears, insecurities and secrets, do their dirty work in darkness – leaving us to wonder, is it ever too late to start again?

Prickly and somewhat unlikable, Meena Fisher is always busy – so busy in fact, that it seems to those who love and know her that she is running away from something, disengaging, building a world as tightly coiled as her unexamined life.

Now 56 years-old, with an ailing mother, a full-time job, several committees, activities and an amateur drama club counting on her, Meena does it all – managing to keep her home spotless, setting such a high bar that no-one, no-one at all, could ever accuse her of being slovenly.

Oscar, her sixty-one year old husband, is a sweet and strangely naive man, deeply in love with his wife, so long used to the desolate evenings and shrewish demands placed on him by his unhappy and always-busy wife, that he has learned to bury his days at work, and as much of his free time as possible in the hallowed sanctity of the golf course.

Suddenly, inexplicably, life uncoils for both Oscar and Meena, as Oscar finds himself facing unpreventable early retirement, and the rhythm of lives long spent largely lonely and apart, bathed in denial, can no longer be preserved.

Can this thirty-six year-old marriage survive? Is it even worth fighting for?

I enjoyed this wonderful and sensitive story, rolling with the emotional punches, fingers crossed for Oscar, sweet Oscar, – as we learn first-hand the insidious and hateful effect of shame, lurking for decades in the beating of a little heart once singed, and the wasted trail of time and suffering left in its wake.

Awakenings, if they can surface at all for this suddenly struggling couple, will come late in life – but perhaps, this reader cannot help but hope, not too late for a golden new beginning.

A great big thank you to the author, and the publisher, for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.

My stop today on the @rararesources #blogtour for #NotsogoldenOldies by @LizDaviesauthor