Audrey’s Gone AWOL is the first novel by Australian author, Annie de Monchaux. Wife of Simon and mother of three adult children, fifty-nine-year-old Audrey Lamont is already feeling rather redundant with her empty nest, and a bit invisible, when she learns her husband is probably having an affair with his brilliant, gorgeous, petitely perfect co-author, Dr Midori Crump.

Simon’s attitude is anything but contrite so, when her favourite aunt in Brittany is injured, it’s the perfect opportunity to take a break from her marriage on the chance that Simon will realise just what he’s missing. She still has hopes of redeeming her marriage of thirty-seven years. Her children, all in their twenties, are supportive and set up a WhatsApp group, mumsgoneawol, so they can all keep in touch.

In Brittany, Audrey meets friends and neighbours of her beloved Tata Pascale, who include the irrepressible, flamboyant Lilou and the rather taciturn Pascal, nicknamed No E. She lives in Pascale’s hayloft, readies the cottage for paying guests, tries to put the garden into some order, and decides that something completely different would be learning to tap-dance.

She waits for Simon to come to his senses, to apologise. It doesn’t happen. Instead, she learns from regular contact with her children that moving her personal possessions to her brother, Laurence’s, before heading to France constitutes a statement of intent that weakens her position; and that the affair with Midori might actually have begun much earlier that she had supposed. Has her whole marriage been a farce? And what now?

Audrey has been a wife and mother for thirty-seven years; she has no means of support, no job apart from volunteering at the primary school canteen, and no expertise she can market; and they’ve been living in Simon’s parents’ house, so perhaps she now has nowhere to live.

While she considers her options, she distracts herself with gardening and guests, making preserves and bedroom furniture, rescuing hedgehogs and trying to tap-dance, and seems excessively accident prone as she does so. She dreads any communication from Simon, but looks forward to calls from her children and delights in emails sent via a class teacher from sweet little Jakob, who sends sketches, the subject of which must be guessed.

Then, she needs a bit of wiring done, and Dominic, the electrician sets her pulse racing, not just with gorgeous body and his deep brown eyes, but also his kindness. But she’s still married. Isn’t she?

De Monchaux gives her characters depth and appeal, even those quirky Breton villagers, and the comments from Audrey’s children are heartening and prove that her self-sacrifice was worthwhile. Simon’s gaslighting and arrogance will leave readers gasping, and they will likely delight in the fact that de Monchaux gives his exotic lover, Midori the decidedly unlovely surname “Crump”. Much of what Audrey faces will resonate with readers of a certain vintage, and her (often self-deprecating) inner monologue is at times insightful and regularly hilarious. Very entertaining.