Ease — Patrick Gale

A world-weary playwright takes on a fake name and a sleazy apartment -- and learns to live again -- in this charming novel from bestselling author Patrick Gale.

Success came quick to Domina Tey. An award-winning playwright, Domina was famous before she finished university, and life has been easy ever since. Twenty years later, she churns out plays in the beautiful house she shares with her longtime lover, a novelist whose books are unreadable and whose sense of romance died long ago. Worst of all, Domina's muse has deserted her, and so she decides to go slumming for as long as it takes to get her life back on track.
 
She takes a bedsit in Bayswater, one of London's seedier districts, with the hope that privacy will finally allow her to get some real work done. But she's barely written a page before she finds herself getting involved with her fellow tenants: a wannabe actress, a gay French lothario, and a devout member of the local Greek Orthodox Church. They show Domina a side of life she's never seen before, and she quickly learns that before she can start writing again, she will have to live.
 
This sparkling second novel from Patrick Gale shows the wit, good humor, and deep understanding of human emotions that made him a rising star of literary London. As insightful as it is funny, Ease will make you want to pack a suitcase and find a bedsit of your very own.