Fair exchange - Michele Roberts

Drawing on the secrets, lives & affairs of two of the most famous & passionate figures of the late 19th century - Mary Wollstonecraft & William Wordsworth - this is Roberts' most romantic novel to date, written in beautiful, beguiling prose. In the early 1800s, Louise, a French peasant, fearing she is about to die, calls for her priest. She has a secret to confess. Though the priest is impatient, she wants to tell her tale from the beginning. It opens in London in the 1780s, when Jemima Boote arrives at Mary Wollstonecraft's school. Later she follows her beloved teacher to Paris, wanting to be part of the erupting revolution & then - 6 months pregnant - retreats to the village of Louise's youth. Her arrival coincides with that of another young mother-to-be, Annette, who has been sent by her parents to the country to hide her disgraceful pregnancy & to get over her infatuation with William, a young English poet. In an abandoned convent they take up their waiting: waiting for their babies, waiting for their men. While borrowing hints & facts from the lives of Wordsworth & Wollstonecraft, the intriguing mystery of the lives that unfold as a result of these pregnancies, is Michele Roberts' own fascinating creation.