Adam is a writer, struggling to come to terms with the death of his painter father, Robert, and his difficult marriage to Catherine. Before he married Catherine, he had been the lover of her sister, Vinny. The classic menage à trois seems about to repeat itself, when Adam discovers his wife’s father was less innocent than he had thought.
Set mainly in contemporary London, partly in France, the action also harks back to the 1970’s. The narrative evokes the style of the nineteenth century novelists and their themes: desire, guilt, pleasure. Pastoral landscapes alternate with those of the inner city and the past’s interaction with the present is acted out by ghosts. The dead father haunts his son; in real life Vinny haunts her sister; and the whole novel is haunted by one of its great earliest exponents, Charlotte Bronte, and her passionate search for creative fulfilment.
- ‘Michèle Roberts is one of those writers, descended perhaps as much from Monet and Debussy as Virginia Woolf or Keats … To read a book by her is to savour colour, sound, taste, texture and touch as never before’ The Times
- 'Michele Roberts writes some of the most sensual prose around in contemporary fiction ... You do not just read the book, you also smell and see the action' Penelope Lively, Spectator
Paperback:
£7.99
Published 27/05/2004
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