About the Author

Fran Cooper grew up in London before reading English at Cambridge and Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She spent three years in Paris writing a PhD about travelling eighteenth-century artists, and currently works in the curatorial department of a London museum. These Dividing Walls is her first novel.

Reviews

'These Dividing Walls' is a clever literary fictional commentary that can be viewed as either a social dissertation or simply a tale of people living in the same building brought together through a crisis situation. - Great Reads and Tea Leaves BlogThe writing is exquisite and discursive. The narrative meanders, rich with incidental details and acute observations, Cooper's strength, her ability to enter into the souls of her characters. - Isobel BlackThorn BlogThe narrative has twists that surprise, but the main effect is to evoke compassion and understanding for its cast of characters. Cooper elegantly illustrates personality, life experience and social position of each character in a multiplicity of nuances, fusing individual lives to broader social issues. The political is no longer abstract. Loss and grief; losing independence, a job, a close relative, is potently personal. But, as Frederique says to Edward, Paris should be about joy, and it is there to find. It can be found in broken lives.This novel is well written; it is a pleasure to read. Locating a copy and looking out for Fran Cooper's future work are both highly recommended. - Queensland Reviewers Collective