Somewhere in the kaleidoscope between life and art sits Clare, whose story is told in this book. Clare, like author Marion Halligan, is a woman of a certain age whose much-loved husband of thirty odd years has just died. And Clare, like Marion, is a novelist who rather surprisingly seems to have written some of Marion's earlier novels. The loss of such a marriage of true minds and kindred spirits leaves behind it "a cathedral of grief" and Clare, faithful wife, reels into the arms of an old friend who also happens to be happily married. Marion effortlessly shifts you through the fog garden of grief and artifice, playing all the time on that dangerous ground between her own life and that of her heroine.
