They'd met on their first day at school - four little girls who were all very different from each other but who somehow became close friends. Their friendship now has lasted 35 years. As their birthdays all fall in the same week, they made a pact long ago to spend each big birthday-decade together. So far, they'd managed it.
Now as their 39th birthday looms, Angel, a famous Hollywood actress, announces that this will be her last birthday. Terrified of aging, she absolutely refuses to turn 40. So Lexi, the mother hen of the group and an artist, invites them to Florida for a week-long celebration of this, their last birthday together.
Brenda, mother to five grown-up children, flies in from Dublin, eagerly looking forward to her first foreign trip ever. Mel, however, has to be prised away from New York, where she is a successful partner in a law firm - Mel is a workaholic with no other friends or love in her life.
The four come together for the celebration, but soon things start to unravel, and the week ends disastrously. Lexi is distraught. Can their friendship endure? Only time will tell.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Now as their 39th birthday looms, Angel, a famous Hollywood actress, announces that this will be her last birthday. Terrified of aging, she absolutely refuses to turn 40. So Lexi, the mother hen of the group and an artist, invites them to Florida for a week-long celebration of this, their last birthday together.
Brenda, mother to five grown-up children, flies in from Dublin, eagerly looking forward to her first foreign trip ever. Mel, however, has to be prised away from New York, where she is a successful partner in a law firm - Mel is a workaholic with no other friends or love in her life.
The four come together for the celebration, but soon things start to unravel, and the week ends disastrously. Lexi is distraught. Can their friendship endure? Only time will tell.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Used availability for Pauline Lawless's The Birthday Girls