An Intolerable Burden

'A sharp eye for the terrain of family battlefields' - Daily Telegraph

The remembrance of them is grievous to us; the burden of them is intolerable.

Guilt has followed Nancy Potter around ever since she spent her teenage years under the thumb of an overbearing, old-fashioned grandmother and a perpetually mourning mother in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Time she should have spent having adventures with friends and indulging in romances…

When Nancy Potter remembers her sins — committed before and after her marriage to George, the fundamentalist Christian who lives for the Times crossword, Nancy is determined that her two children, Claire and Roddy, will grow up without the crippling sense of guilt which has overshadowed her life.

Where Roddy is concerned, she certainly seems to have succeeded.

And bright and brilliant Claire seems to have built herself a happy, modern life.

Claire is independent, with a good job and lives with her boyfriend, Francis, a typical young citizen of Mrs Thatcher’s booming Britain, bursting with new ideas which will make him rich and famous, and set them up for life.

But under the surface all might not be as easy as it seems.

In Claire, the middle-class social worker who carries the burden of all society’s wrongs, Teresa Waugh has created a new fictional archetype who should be instantly recognisable to anyone who has ever read the Guardian or sought help from the social services.

Teresa Waugh’s third novel explores the workings of guilt and conscience in two generations, and in her study of Nancy and Claire, Waugh seems to suggest that in whatever changing forms, they are an essential part of the human condition.

Without them, as in Roddy’s case, something emerges which many may judge less than human.
Praise for Teresa Waugh:
‘A delightful read … although she is wickedly perceptive about her characters’ foibles they are sympathetically drawn’ - Sunday Express

‘Side-splittingly funny and one of the most touching and convincing portraits of middle-aged love I ever read … a delight, a jewel’- A.N. Wilson, Evening Standard

‘Waugh has a sharp ear for understated comedy, especially in the area of hypocrisy and self-deception … it is the success of the book that this tension is so delicately handled, that the reader is both amused and moved’ - Literary Review

'Delicious dollops of family life dished up piping hot with a dash of vinegar' — Literary Review

'A beautifully observed tragi-comedy' - Daily Express

'Deft and funny' — Spectator

'A sharp eye for the terrain of family battlefields' - Daily Telegraph

Teresa Waugh was born in 1940, the only daughter of the late sixth Earl of Onslow, KBE, MC, and spent her childhood in the family home at West Clandon, Surrey. In 1961 she married an author and journalist with whom she lives in Somerset. In 1978 she obtained a First Class degree in French and Italian at Exeter University and she has translated several books, including Jean Tulard’s Napoleon, the Myth of the Saviour and Jean Gimpel’s The Cathedral Builders. Her first novel, Painting Water, was published by Penguin in 1986.

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