Young Mother with Red Hair (Unabridged‪)‬

"We don’t understand our own lives, do we? Even though we live them."

How did it come to this?

Jane, a married teacher on maternity leave, has spent many long hours posing naked in the London studio of Vivian Young, the most famous and admired painter of his generation, notorious for his painstaking methods and turbulent love-life. Jane writes addressing her husband, Michael, trying, as much for herself as for him, to make some sense of all that has happened to her, of all she has done.

She has re-evaluated her life during long, long sessions under the artist’s relentlessly penetrating gaze and insightful questioning. Now, she reconsiders her entire history, coming to surprising and disturbing conclusions.