Poppyland, by Raffaella Barker

A pile-up of adjectives threatens this romance

Raffaella Barker's name is synonymous with warm-hearted, chaotic romantic comedies, invariably set in the Norfolk countryside where she lives. Poppyland, her sixth novel for adults, opens with no departure from this formula – a lone man smoking a cigarette watching a woman and two small children careering around a windswept Norfolk beach. Then, abruptly, the action switches to Copenhagen, five years earlier. Grace, a young English painter nervously attending the opening of her first exhibition at a prestigious gallery, steps outside into the freezing evening air. In true tall dark handsome stranger style, up looms Ryder out of the night. Instant attraction and banter ensue, and Grace invites him back into the gallery. "His presence is magnetic, distracting, comforting, singular." Unsurprisingly, overwhelmed by this overload of adjectives, the two quickly lose each other in the crowd – and that would appear to be that.

Several years afterwards, Grace is living in New York with Jerome, a wealthy, older oil executive whose aura of calm and control, at first appealing, is now a cause of deep irritation. Their relationship is in free fall. Grace only feels a sense of privacy in her studio, absorbed in work. The descriptions of Grace as an artist (and indeed the art world as a whole) are unconvincing and forced; more a vehicle for the character, rather than a properly realised vocation. Fortunately for the purposes of the story, artist Grace does not dominate the book – starry-eyed, questing Grace does. Her older sister Lucy is happily married with two daughters and a cottage in rural Norfolk; Grace, at 32, wonders if she will ever achieve a comparable contentment.

Across the Atlantic, from the solitude of a London houseboat, Ryder, the brief encounter from Copenhagen, is pondering the same question. As a marine engineer his work takes him to the remotest parts of the world, deliberately leaving little time for a permanent partner. The latest non-commitment has ended, with mutual relief.

What Ryder and Grace have in common and unawares is loss. Grace mourns the collapse of her parents' marriage and their subsequent early deaths; Ryder nurses an abiding memory of the perfection of his sister Bonnie, who was killed in an accident at 19. Perfection also stalks Grace in the shape of her own serene, well-adjusted sister. Reluctantly she accepts an invitation to the summer christening of her nieces in Norfolk, while Ryder attempts to face the past by arranging to visit Bonnie's old boyfriend for the first time since she died. It is fair to assume, without spoiling the plot, that fate will contrive to bring the pair together again.

Barker is drawn repeatedly to the wheeling desolation of the Norfolk coast – this vivid evocation leaps off the page, as do delightful snapshots revealing the hot-breathed collision of family life. The romantic element is less than compelling. Grace and Ryder, though well into adulthood, are as gasping and gauche as teenagers, with awkward, stilted dialogue. Much of the scenes have a slapdash, hastily written feel. But as an undemanding, nicely escapist read, Poppyland ticks the boxes.