Venus Flaring

Ornella and Veronica are the very best of friends, sharing everything, hiding nothing. Ornella, domineering and flamboyant, becomes a doctor, Veronica, observant and self-possessed, a journalist. But then something goes horribly wrong, and what was once the truest of friendships disintegrates into a nightmare of barely controlled resentment. As Ornella's loyalty fades, Veronica's desperate need for reconciliation becomes a matter of life and death – and if you can't trust your best friend with your life, then who can you trust? 'Compelling power…Dunn shows again her gift for making the ordinary seem extraordinary. Her ear for the rhythms of speech is unerring, her feeling for the minutiae of experience acute. It takes a good deal of artistry to create the illusion of real life, and she has managed something more difficult still, which is to show us how strange real life can be.' CHRISTINA KONING, 'The Times' 'A sensitive and often funny story, that impressively treats a friendship between young women with the sort of grandness and ceremony usually reserved (by novelists) for love affairs.' SUSIE BOYT, 'Independent' 'The prose is precise, images bloom like bruises or blood drops…compact worlds are contained in the simplest of descriptions. Dunn is a surgeon of the heart, and her observations are sparky.' EITHNE FARRY, 'Time Out'