This the story of 28 year-old Patience Gathorne-Galley. She’s a good Catholic girl, independently wealthy with a husband, Edward, and three little girls, Star, Sue and Sal.

But Patience is an innocent, hopelessly naive.

She relies on her siblings for advice. Lionel is a good devout Catholic, whose wife’s desertion hasn’t shaken his faith one iota. Helen, on the other hand, is a lapsed Catholic, living in sin with an Anglican solicitor.

Ah yes, SIN. That word is writ large in all their lives. Lionel takes the avoidance of sin terribly seriously. Helen is rather more sanguine, but she hasn’t completely lost the values she was raised with. And Patience knew that sin was a very bad thing that she really should avoid.

She really was that naive, a young woman passed directly from her parents to her husband with no chance at all to look at the world around her.

She was surprised when Lionel told her that Edward had a mistress. He was a good, reliable husband, and why ever would a woman want to go to bed with a man when it wasn’t her marital duty?

Yes, there was a story waiting to happen here. And happen it did.

Patience met a man. Phillip. She fell in love. And in lust.

“She understood in a sort of flash of revelation almost everything Lionel had ever told her. It really was different getting into bed with someone who wasn’t your husband. And no wonder Lionel was so anxious no one should begin, because once having begun, and knowing how lovely it was, one would find it very difficult to stop.”

When she confided in Helen her sister assured her that it wasn’t just the fact that Phillip wasn’t her husband that made the difference. And then Patience knew that her future had to be spent with Phillip and her babies. But however could she disentangle herself from Edward and not fall into sin?

Patience’s attempts to do that, to reach her happy ending, make this a charming comedy of manners It sails along beautifully, with lovely dialogue batted back and forth by beautifully drawn characters.

I could see them and I could hear their voices. I could imagine actors on a stage having wonderful fun with this material too.

John Coates captures the feminine psyche extraordinarily well. I am inclined to believe that he was brought up with sisters, and that maybe he had a colourful aunt or two. But that’s just speculation, so let’s just say he understands women.

He writes beautifully too, with a light touch, with a lovely turn of phrase, and with just the right amount of wit.

I found that I could even forgive Patience’s habit of addressing everyone as ‘dear!’

Patience’s faith, and the problems created by the differences between church and secular law, provided a serious thread that counterbalanced the comedy and the romance quite beautifully.

There were some very nice twists and turns along the way. Moments of comedy and moments of joy deftly handled. I turned the pages quickly and stayed up rather later than I had planned because I so wanted to know what was going to happen.

And yet my feelings were mixed. There were times when I found Patience irksome. It is one thing to be a simple soul, but even the simplest souls have some awareness, some concern for the feelings of others. But Patience didn’t. she was utterly oblivious, thinking only of what she wanted.

It was wonderful that her discovery of love and passion swept away everything, save her maternal love, but I found it hard to believe that any grown woman could be quite so insensitive to other people’s feelings.

Maybe that says more about me than the book. I’ve often been told that I’m too serious, and that I over-think things.

But I’m afraid that near the end, when Patience said that she had grown up and all that it meant that she was more forceful in getting her own way I was bitterly disappointed.

I just needed some little acknowledgement that she might have been thoughtless, or some little sign that she had sympathy or understanding for others. But it never came. And an afterword revealed that Patience never really grew up at all.

Seeing love conquer all was delightful, and the way that the story played out was a joy.

To me though, this looks like a flawed gem. I saw the beauty and the flaws, but I suspect some will see only the beauty and others will see only the flaws. ( )

Mrs Gathorne-Galley is a perfect 1950s’ wife. She was ‘brought up to be an English lady’ and is beautiful, gentle, patient (like her name) and she submits to her husband’s advances regularly and without demur. Perhaps Edward’s only complaint is that she is rather Catholic and hasn’t yet produced a son but three adorable, blonde daughters.

Then she meets concert pianist Philip, ‘the man Heaven obviously intended one to marry’ and everything in her life in upended. Falling in love and into bed with Philip awakens Patience to everything she has missed in life and she has to get out of her marriage as quickly as possible. Coached by her worldly sister Helen, Patience suddenly finds how to liberate herself – as a woman, mother and romantic heroine – and get out of Edward’s clutches and the only way is by being a grown-up woman and a bitchy one. She finds it surprisingly liberating and looks at her husband almost for the first time. ‘Edward ought to go into Parliament, she thought suddenly. He had the bluff, handsome exterior and the rather shabby interior of a first-class, second-rate politician.’

Here’s a devout not entirely consistent young woman who enjoys going to bed with her lover (it’s a revelation after Mr Gathorne-Galley), who loves her babies to distraction and doesn’t lose her religious faith and finds an entrancing love. As a period comedy this is gently feminist, frothy and amusing. A delight so send copies to friends with a big bottle of expensive perfume and large box of raspberry rose truffles.

Patience is the story of a 27 year old woman who has been married to a 45 year old man for seven years. She loves her three babies and her sister Helen and likes the rest of the world because it is more pleasant to be pleasant than to be discontented. When her brother Lionel, a really awful man whose wife went on permanent retreat to a cloister, tells Patience that her husband is committing the Sin of adultery, Patience is relieved. Since she uses the mating sessions to plan the menu for the next day, she rather hopes her husband's mistress might take over her husband's sex life. All goes placidly along until Patience falls head over heals in love with a concert pianist and discovers that Sin is really very nice.

The core of the book revolves around Patience's Catholic beliefs and what ensues is a "madcap" confusion of what constitutes a valid marriage in the Church and who will go to heaven or hell or purgatory because of their marital status. Patience's theology is naive at best, and downright ridiculous at certain points as she tries to muddle through the web of annulment, divorce, first wives who are alive and then dead and so on and so on and so on....

I found the heroine dim-witted and uninteresting and her lover almost as bad. This might be considered gentle satire; I found it painfully boring,. ( )

It's clear right from the start of Patience that our leading lady is a rather downtrodden wife, even if she hasn't yet realised it. She's appropriately named, and she regards herself as happily married until the day her self-righteous brother comes to tell her that he's seen her husband Edward with another woman. Patience's world has revolved around Edward and her home and "the babies" and, to be fair, he's a kindly tyrant, pompous and unimaginative. Her brother Lionel is much more immediately loathsome, solely concerned with the fact that Edward is committing Sin - he doesn't really care about Patience as a wronged wife, but busies himself with Edward's "spiritual welfare" and worries that the children will be disgraced if they don't have a father. Lionel has already more or less disowned his other sister, Helen, because she got divorced -- she has remarried and had a child, but Lionel refers to him as a bastard. Lionel is a staunch Catholic, Patience a rather less fanatical one, but sincere, and Helen is lapsed, of course. But Edward's infidelity is only really a catalyst for the events which follow, leading to a what should prove a shattering discovery for Patience. Only it isn't, quite -- it's not nearly as earth-shattering as some of the other discoveries Patience is about to make. And to her, they are really much more interesting....

As befits its title, Patience is a very quiet book. There was a point, reading it, where I stopped and thought "This is written by a man!" In fact, I had to look back at the cover to be certain. Because although it's also very funny, it is very delicately so, and Patience's at time bemused but nonetheless gratified exploration of her thoughts and feelings is handled with a gentle irony and deftness. Compared, say, to Denis Mackail, of whom I am exceedingly fond, this is a much more subtle work, with the quality of a fable about it.

I see, however, that some readers have found Patience as a character irritatingly naive and passive in her seven-year marriage and self-absorbed in her desire to extricate herself. Hmm. I can't say I agree -- yes, she is an absolute innocent and has been very complacent thus far in her life, but I saw that as more to do with the period. It's difficult, from the twenty-first century, to appreciate just how sheltered an upbringing could still be, in the 1950s, when a girl could go straight from living at home with mummy and daddy to a husband who expected to be the authority in his home. And to those who find it too pat that she instantly falls for someone, well, I'm still a believer in love at first sight, and this is, after all, a comedy. ( )

I know it's awfully uncharitable of me, but I was rather hoping that, between the cold baths and the gadding about in the park half-dressed, dear Patience would have succumbed to pneumonia. I'm sure I was meant to be charmed by her delightful naivete, but all I really wanted to do was smack her. ( )