The Real Charlotte

Description for THE REAL CHARLOTTE by E E Somerville and Martin Ross:

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 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 with 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.