Jane and Prudence

The author of Excellent Women explores female friendship and the quiet yearnings of British middle-class life—a literary delight for fans of Jane Austen.

Jane Cleveland and Prudence Bates were close friends at Oxford University, but now live very different lives. Forty-one-year-old Jane lives in the country, is married to a vicar, has a daughter she adores, and lives a very proper life in a very proper English parish. Prudence, a year shy of thirty, lives in London, has an office job, and i...