Bestselling author of Having It All and All That She Wants, Maeve Haran has scored another triumph with Soft Touch, a light-hearted look at the melodrama of family relationships in the 1990s. Catherine Hope serves as the novel's focus as she finds herself helplessly trapped between generations. Scorned by her 18-year-old daughter who treats her "with the kind of contempt normally reserved for traffic wardens and paedophiles", Catherine finds no solace from her overbearing, conventional mother-in-law: "The trouble with your generation is that you have the authority of a damp dishrag!" And things look set to go from bad to worse when her daughter becomes involved with a sexy road protestor--a road her mother-in-law is campaigning to have built! Tempers flare, lines are drawn and Catherine is ready to give up on the lot of them. But when it comes down to it, the whole family manages to surprise one another in the face of crisis. Soft Touch is an entertaining novel about growing up, growing old and growing together. --Shannon Bingham