The Golden Rule

"If you like your novels wide-ranging, ambitious, socially panoramic, and engaged in the most important issues of the day, Amanda Craig is the writer for you. For more than twenty years now she has been anatomising the state of the British nation with wit and empathy." -  Jonathan Coe

When Hannah is invited into the First-Class carriage of the London to Penzance train by Jinni, she walks into a spider’s web. Now a poor young single mother, Hannah once escaped Cornwall to go to university. But once she married Jake and had his child, her dreams were crushed into bitter disillusion. Her husband has left her for Eve, rich and childless, and Hannah has been surviving by becoming a cleaner in London. 

Jinni is equally angry and bitter, and in the course of their journey, the two women agree to murder each other’s husbands. After all, they are strangers on a train – who could possibly connect them? But when Hannah goes to Jinni's husband's home the next night, she finds Stan, a huge, hairy, ugly drunk who has his own problems. He claims Jinni is a very different person from the one who has persuaded Hannah to commit a terrible crime. Who is telling the truth - and who is the real victim? 

"An acute and passionate observer of society in both town and country, and among rich and poor. She is harrowingly good at portraying the corrosive effects of poverty, particularly on vulnerable women with children to protect. Her prose is a delight... Best of all, Craig has the knack for creating interesting characters and for making one care about what lies in store for them. If you can do that, nothing else really matters."  -  Andrew Taylor, Spectator