Anna Dillon

The Affair

There are two sides to every story ... but in an affair, there are three:
The Wife
"When did I first suspect that my husband was having an affair?  I think I knew long before I was forced to acknowledge the truth."
The Husband
"Did I know what I was doing?  Only vaguely.  No, that's not true, of course I knew what I was doing.  I just didn't realise that things would go so far.  Not this time anyway."
The Mistress
"Of course I knew he was married, and I knew he was lying to me.  But I loved him ... or I thought I loved him."
The Affair
The very modern story of an affair, told from the viewpoints of the three principals involved: the wife, the husband and the mistress.
The novel takes place over the course of a week, and takes the unusual route of examining the same events from the three different viewpoints.
This was one of the hardest books I've ever tackled. Essentially, the same story is told three times. I had to ensure that everything the wife said in Part One was repeated in Part Two, but interpreted differently by the husband. Similarly, when the husband makes a promise to his mistress in Part Two, she hears one thing; he means something different.
It took five complete rewrites before I was happy. The book received wonderful reviews. What people particularly liked what that I had chosen not the repeat the standard cliches of the virtuous wife, the villaneous husband and the conniving mistress. The Affair is the story of three ordinary people in an extraordinary situation. Click here to see the sequel, Consequences.