Real Charlotte

Into the small Irish lakeside town of Lismoyle moves pretty, coquettish Francie Fitzpatrick. She provides a steady subject for gossip in the close community as her attentions waver between Christopher Dysart, the shy, scholarly heir of the Dysarts of Bruff, Roddy Lambert, his raffish land agent, and the dashing English army officer, Gerald Hawkins.
Against the dreamy late Victorian background of boating outings and tennis parties, Francie flirts with her young men, unaware of the darker drama which surrounds her, for her cousin Charlotte, a stiff plain woman of secret passions, has laid schemes which will go tragically awry...
The Real Charlotte is a brilliantly conceived microcosm of an age now passed, an Irish Upstairs, Downstairs full of wittily drawn characters from upper-class drawing-rooms and from peasant turf-cabins.
'Leaving the huge whale-Ullyses-basking off-shore, what better Irish novel is there than The Real Charlotte!' Terence de Vere White, Irish Times
'The whole thing is delightful' Norman Shrapnel, Guardian
'A masterpiece... very funny indeed' Daily Telegraph