The Great Husband Hunt, or, as it was originally titled for the UK, The Unfortunates, follows the steamroller progress of Poppy Minkel, New York mustard heiress, from her sad little rich girl childhood to her performance as a reluctant matriarch and a dedicated follower of fashion. It is a story about loss and roots. Poppy’s life takes in a broad sweep, from New York in 1912 to Florida in 1970, via Paris and the rolling meadows of middle England.

THE INSPIRATION…
A book with two titles says a lot about the width of the Atlantic Ocean.
This novel was first published in the UK as The Unfortunates, an ironic reference to Poppy Minkel’s poor little rich girl take on the Lower East Side tenement dwellers. When the time came to publish the US edition I was advised against the use of irony.
‘Americans just don’t get it,’ said the men in suits.
‘Oh yes we do,’ retorted all my smart American friends.
But caution prevailed, we plucked The Great Husband Hunt from page 1 of Poppy’s story and a new edition was born…

The Unfortunates/Great Husband Hunt -- and I’m afraid I will always think of this book as The Unfortunates -- is based loosely on the life of Peggy Guggenheim, and I owe its conception partly to my friend, Joan Fitzgerald. Joan is a wonderful American sculptor who knew Peggy. Indeed, after a bottle of Valpolicella she does a great impersonation of her. Peggy wasn’t the most loveable of women but there was something about her story that attracted me powerfully. It also gave me the opportunity to write about Jewishness. Some of my best friends, etc. etc. and I have always been fascinated by their various attitudes to their heritage, or as Poppy Minkel says, ‘In being Jewish to just the right degree.’

I had such a ball researching this book, taking my Jewish friends to the Tenement Museum on Orchard Street, force-feeding them on blintzes at Katz’s Deli, dragging them to Temple Emanu-el on Friday night. Some day they’ll thank me.

In Praise of The Great Husband Hunt
"A combination of stealthy nostalgia and tender comedy... Graham's writing has never been so straightforwardly serious, partly because she works within a tragicomic mode. More importantly she writes with pathos - a quality that is rarely taken seriously nowadays... Here, her prose rhythms bring sadness to the surface, as Poppy's grief blends with our nostalgia for its possibility."
The Times Literary Supplement, Sophie Ratcliffe, 5 July 2002

"Graham is a writer with a remarkable malleable comic voice that has recast it self over and over again in a series of novels..." The Guardian, Alex Clark, 6 July 2002