Used book – *The Dearly Beloved*, Beryl Bainbridge

London in the 70s. Anne is engaged to a young man who goes to work in the United States. She meets William, a writer, with whom she falls madly in love. William is handsome, romantic, different from the men she has known, and totally unpredictable. Pregnant, she discovers that not only is her dear William married with children, but he also has other mistresses. The reader is drawn into a whirlwind of events that are all signs of Anne's transition from one world to another; from the narrow, opaque, reassuring, and empty world in which she had lived until then, to the free, sharp world where choice, self-awareness, open-mindedness, and creation exist, William. After Elizabeth von Arnim, Nancy Mitford, Barbara Pym, Beryl Bainbridge explores the "intermittences of the heart" with very British humor and a thoroughly feminine depth.