I read Yesterday's Houses, and enjoyed it very much - like Fay Weldon, i.e. depressingly true about men & women - really funny, cynical and bleak, and a first page that just sucks you right in. I also read 'The sex life of my aunt' some years ago, and remember loving it. And now I'm reading Getting Back Brahms (haven't quite got to the end) and was totally confused. It reads like a Wooster novel, but with very erudite jokes, like referencing Iris Murdoch - so lightweight plot, literary jokes. It also has a female MC, first person narrator, who is, it seems, a thoroughly unpleasant, spoilt, self-interested character (as are all the characters, more or less) which prevents me being able to identify with her as you'd want to identify with the MC in a comic romance. It's bizarre. I am hoping the last chapters will let me know what the heck I am supposed to think of it. So far it seems like a parody of a chick-lit novel, but without actually being funny, because it's too vicious and the MC is so unlikeable that you don't even enjoy reading the book much, because there's no one to identify with. And the 'getting back Brahms' plot thread is completely lost after about 2 pages, making the title irrelevant. I have no idea how she found a publisher for it.
What is she? Women's fiction? Chick-lit - surely not, but there are elements. Literary fiction? What does anyone else think of her?

I read Mrs Fytton’s Country Life a couple of years ago, and enjoyed it so much I intended to read more of her stuff. I got sidetracked, as you do, and forgot about her – so thanks for the reminder.

What is she? I’d say commercial women’s fiction, but I only have the one book to base that on.

Dee