My Sister Clare

Clare Meredith is a destructive beauty born to wreak havoc in the lives of other women. Told by one of her sisters, Eve, this is the story of the girls' growing up in India in the 1920s, the declining years of the British Raj. The Meredith family are among the few who cannot relinquish their privileged lifestyle there. Home, however, is England, more particularly Wales, where the girls return for schooling and the care of loving relatives. For Eve, Wales has a strong pull--a childhood companion, now a painter, with whom she is in love, lives there. Clare damages that relationship, contracts a disastrous marriage and returns to India where she wages sexual warfare with a vengeance. The involved story, which climaxes during the Battle of Britain, moves deftly between the cultures of East and West. If the characters lack nuance--Clare totally amoral, Eve incredibly self-denying--the luminous Welsh locale and British-Indian ambience inform a well-told, entertaining romance by the author of Tomorrow's Rainbow. (June)