The Truth Club

Published by Accent Press 2007

Copyright © 2005 Grace Wynne-Jones

ISBN 1905170661/9781905170661

The right of Grace Wynne-Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the publisher: Accent Press, The Old School, Upper High Street, Bedlinog, Mid Glamorgan, CF46 6SA

Printed and bound in the UK

Cover design by Joëlle Brindley

Grace Wynne-Jones was born and brought up in Ireland and has also lived in Africa, the US and England. She has a deep interest in psychology, spirituality and healing and she also loves to celebrate the strangeness and wonders of ordinary life and love. She has frequently been praised for the warm belly-laugh humour and tender poignancy in her writing and has been described as ‘a novelist who tells the truth about the human heart’.

Her feature articles have appeared in many magazines and national papers in Ireland and in England and her radio play
Ebb Tide
was broadcast on RTE 1. Her short stories have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and Australia, and have also been broadcast on RTE and BBC Radio 4. She is the author of four critically acclaimed novels:
Ordinary Miracles
,
Wise Follies
,
Ready Or Not?
and
The Truth Club.
Some of her fiction has also been translated into German, Russian and Indonesian. S
he has written and broadcast many radio talks and is also the producer and presenter of two forthcoming radio documentaries. She has been included in the book
Sunday Miscellany A Selection From 2004 – 2006
(New Island). She also contributed to the travel book
Travelling Light
(Tivoli).

Please visit her website for more information:

www.gracewynnejones.com

For Maura

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A big thank you goes to my agent Lisa Eveleigh for all her support, encouragement and help with this book.  Loads of thanks also go to Hazel Cushion and Bob Cushion of the wonderful Accent Press and to Joelle Brindley for the lovely jacket artwork. I also send my brother Patrick Wynne-Jones a big printed hug for his kindness and understanding.

Thanks too go to Eve Dolphin, Leo Rutherford, Richard Offutt, Julie Turner, Philip Casey, Lin Kirk, Gwynnie, Leo Rutherford, Liz, John, Joe Keveny, John Cantwell and Karen Ward, Alison Walsh, Tana Eilis French, the Ulster Bank and the friendly folks at Teignmouth Library, and to Alberto Villoldo for his inspiring teachings about healing and Shamanism. Love and light is sent to my various ‘helpers’ and to the characters in this novel who taught me so much. I also thank my lovely relatives and pals in the U.K. and Ireland and U.S.A. for being so supportive. My dear friend and former neighbour, Maura Egan, passed away in 2004.  She was a wonderful woman who will be sorely missed by her family and many friends in Little Bray. I so enjoyed our chats and cups of tea and I was so grateful for her kindness.

PRAISE FOR
THE TRUTH CLUB
:

‘…Grace Wynne-Jones has written an entertaining, intelligent and genuinely funny story…this is a great read, especially for commuters...guaranteed to shorten any journey.’ THE IRISH TIMES

‘It (‘The Truth Club’) manages to achieve something that most chick ‘lit’ doesn’t. It makes you want to read past the half-way point. And most unusually, you even find yourself wanting to read right to the end, as opposed to finishing it out of a sense of tidiness, as you would the last biscuit on the plate…there are shades of an intense Anne Tyler novel about it, especially in Sally’s intimate assessment of her relationship with her husband, which is mature and insightful…If ‘The Truth Club’ were a dessert, it would be a tiramisu: multi-layered, and definitely substantial, with some surprising elements to it. Ultimately satisfying…’ EVENING HERALD

‘The terrain of ‘The Truth Club’…is the fragility of the human heart, the conflicting loyalties that relationships bring, the choices that we make or simply fail to....a delicate exploration of being human.’ THE IRISH EXAMINER

‘...a novel which by turns had me laughing (aloud) entranced and, by the end a little bit wiser than I was at the beginning. In ‘The Truth Club’ Grace Wynne-Jones has produced a book in which the eclectic characters almost leap from the pages…the book also contains a perfect man, Nathaniel, who ‘almost always’ says the right thing…’ IRELAND ON SUNDAY

‘In the latest crop of chick-lit beach reads…Grace Wynne-Jones comes out top with her quirky new novel ‘The Truth Club’. Her characterisation is always amusing and the plot is delivered with warmth and a healthy sense of the ridiculous…it’s Ms Wynne-Jones’s cutesy sense of humour that makes this book so tasty.’ THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT

‘It is a tour de force.’ KATIE FFORDE

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four