Fiona Capp

Gotland, an island off Sweden, is the place that heroine Esther Chatwin escapes to, mentally and physically, in order to deal with her high-pressure life. Prone to panic attacks in her youth, Esther finds herself catapulted into the limelight after the death of a colleague results in her politician husband David becoming Leader of the Opposition weeks away from an election. This is a disruption in their lives that she was unprepared for and, coupled with the news that her sister is dying of cancer, Esther finds her composure starting to unravel. She accepts her sister's long-standing invitiation to join her and her friend Sven on Gotland. It is there that Esther must face up to the realities of her life and find some equilibrium.

The book alternates between Esther's experiences in Australia in the wake of David's political career and her September idyll on Gotland, which has become the one place she can hold onto to help stave off her rising fears about the impact on their lives of David's success. Capp varies her style of writing as the scene changes, with the Gotland chapters coming across as moody and pastoral, whereas the Australian chapters strike the reader as gritty, urban and rushed.

This is not a book I expected to like, but it is very good and very well-written. I found myself wanting Esther to find peace but Capp manages to preserve empathy for all of her main characters, even David, who could so easily have been made into the villain of the piece. A very readable, absorbing and gratifying book… (altro)

Sometimes I read a book that I find hard to like for the first hundred pages but then as the characters and plot settle in I find I am enjoying the book. In the case of Gotland the opposite applied. I enjoyed the first 100 pages and thought this is going to be good but became more and more disappointed as the book went on. The character of Esther is supposed to be shy and unsure of herself, so much so that she dreads appearing in public with her husband , a politician who is seeking election as Prime Minister. However she manages to be completely uninhibited when it comes to making friends with a new man and quite happily strips off in front of him
and goes skinny dipping . Then she naively thinks that she can continue her affair and keep it a secret when her husband becomes PM ????? The end of the book finds her living in the Lodge and resigned to her fate having give-up her great love. All I can say is "I pitied her husband David ". You cannot expect a person with a career in politics to play the part of the suburban husband and father. The daughter I felt sorry for as she was only a teenager and could not understand but the wife just needed to grow up. To sum up this book was a disappointment.… (altro)

I enjoyed this book. How would you cope if you were a shy and iealistic person married to a politician who is suddenly thrown into the role of leader of the opposition party in parliament. This is what Esther Chatwin and her daughter suddenly have to deal with. Once David becomes leader politics takes over his life and he becomes a different person to Esther, and Esther can no longer just be herself. The author deals with the idea of a special place. Esther is invited to the Swedish island of Gotland by her sister for a break and this becomes her special place where for the most she can be herself and not be subject to panic attacks. There she meets Sven and engages in a diferent kind of relationship, a different freer love. But even there on one occasion she runs into someone who knows her. Her daughter on the other hand finds refuge in her art but for her it is grafitti which of course is illegal and not something the daughter of the leader of the opposition should be involved in. Esther while not liking it is able to accept it as her daughter's outlet for she can think of much worse things her daughter could be involved in but when she is caught in action by the police and David finds out it is a different story for he is concerned about how it might affect him and his chances in the election, and angry that his wife knew, and allowed it. And of course journalists eventually find out about Esther's trips to the island. How do they then deal with that? All of these issues are dealt with in the book which I found to be a really enjoyable read, a book which deals with real issues.… (altro)