A Domestication

The actress has playwrights dying to work with her. Directors are in love with her; adoring fans mob her after performances. Renowned for being a diva, she is as spiky and demanding as she is talented. As a travesti, she is traumatised by her painful childhood as a boy, but since then she has worked hard to acquire all the trappings of conventional success: her thriving acting career; her marriage to a lawyer who loves her; and parenthood, for she and her husband have adopted a little boy whom she loves fiercely. But when she travels with her husband and son for a weekend visit to her family in the countryside, she is confronted with the brutal force of the prejudice she has tried so hard to escape from - and a ticking time bomb threatens to explode. A tragicomedy of domestic dysfunction written in a voice rich with raw, rebellious beauty, A Domestication is a darkly funny, gritty and moving novel about sex, class, the oppressive lure of wealth and convention - and the unquenchable desire for love.