Balancing Act
Joanna Trollope

Narrated By: Julia Franklin

Duration: 9 hours and 45 minutes

What to expect

Susie Moran is a success . She has founded and run her own highly profitable company , and now her three daughters are all involved in the business. Rooted in the traditions of the Stoke-on-Trent potteries, and producing charming, useable objects of distinctive design, Susie is justly proud of her family and her achievement – and has no intention of letting it change.
But what of the men in the family? Susie’s husband, a musician and artist, has always seemed happy to take a back seat. One of her sons-in-law has few ambitions outside the home. Another daughter, though, has brought her husband into the company - and they want to change things, much to Susie’s distress.
And then, into the mix arrives Susie’s father, an ageing hippy who abandoned Susie as a baby. Now he’s alone, and wants to build bridges , although Susie’s daughters are outraged at the idea. Can the needs of a family business override the needs of the family itself? In wanting to preserve her business, will Susie lose something much more precious?

Genre

Modern & contemporary fiction

Listen to a sample

Nobody writes about family tensions better than Joanna Trollope.

Trollope writes about family relationships with intelligence and clear-eyed sympathy, and the outcomes of this terrific novel are always believable as they are surprising. To be relished.

Joanna Trollope, whose evocations of human relationships are as ever penetrating and engaging.

Trollope is an extremely assured writer, with a brilliant eye for detail and a finely tuned emotional intelligence ... she writes absorbing, wise stories that dramatise the dilemmas we face. In Balancing Act, she has done it again.

With her compassion for her characters, Trollope cuts to the quick of family life, and the difference between men and women. I loved it.