Shared Lives

This is the true story of a group of girls who grew up in Cape Town in the Fifties. They were shaped by the South African past, the absurdities of a girls' school, and the pressures to marry at an early age. All three - Romy, Rose and Ellie - died young.;At the centre of the group was Romy, the exuberant daughter of Jewish immigrants. A rebel at school, a resister of weddings, she enraged the men who loved her. As we follow Romy's explosive course, Ellie's struggle with loneliness in her career as a psychologist, and Rose's disappearance into marriage and motherhood, it is the redemptive power of friendship between women that comes to the fore. Through the eyes of a skilled biographer, the significance of their lives is made known, their hidden courage and resourcefulness revealed. Three obscure women, who left nothing but their stories, letters and memories, are brought to life.;Lyndall Gordon was born in Cape Town in 1941, and now teaches in Oxford. She is the author of three prize-winning biographies: "Eliot's Early Years", "Eliot's New Life" and "Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life".