Dimensions
143 x 224 x 22mm
Claire Pitt, twenty-nine and solitary, works in the basement of a second-hand bookshop, where she prepares articles for eventual publication as a posthumous tribute to the deceased owner. Few people visit her basement, so when Martin Gibson, a faded scholar, passes through, Claire becomes inordinately interested. She is even more interested when she meets his wife, a far more spectacular personality. But the unexpected news of this woman's death releases emotions that were not entirely foreseen. Claire finds people mysterious and from afar often alters the script of their lives. Her belief that 'everything is connected' is no defence against the shock that awaits her.
'Like Jane Austen, this novelist works on a little square of ivory rather than a broad canvas... Like Virginia Woolf, her aim is not to draw characters in the round, but to reveal psychological reality in the deep.'
The Times