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Zoe is a singular, although not a lonely child, bookish, observant, temperate but also a lover of fairy tales and the escapes they seem to offer. Her mother echoes these characteristics but, in her, they evidence something a little more diminished. Remarkably, forced out by well-meaning relatives to a social event she would much rather avoid, her mother meets and marries the kind, ebullient Simon. Simon seems to Zoe like a Santa Claus figure, a figure that seems to confirm her trust in fairy tales, who has rescued her mother from long afternoons, and longer evenings, of waiting. She wonders if perhaps now someone will rescue her.
Gentle tragedies, and a dissection of loneliness and the flawed routes out of it offered to women, follow. We become captivated by Zoe's world and by Brookner's rendering of her inner life. Brookner has been at the height of her powers for so long that words like genius and masterpiece flow easily. The astonishing thing is that these words must be invoked to do this level of writing any justice at all. --Mark Thwaite
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: Very Good+. Reprint; First Printing. Minor shelf wear, small stain to fore edge of reading block. ; first printing of Chivers large print edition, 2001. Nice tight copy, no names inside. ; 264 pages; Zoe Cunningham is delighted when her widowed mother remarries, particularly as her new stepfather is amiable, generous, and the owner of a villa in Nice. However this new found happiness comes to an abrupt end when tragedy intervenes. Trade PB. Seller Inventory # 21658