Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

Secrets and lies linger in the very walls of the solid old Normandy house where Therese and Leonie, French and English cousins, grow up after the war. Intrigued by adults' guilty silences and the broken shrine they find in the woods, the girls weave their own fantasies, unwittingly revealing the village's buried shame, a shame that will haunt them both for the rest of their lives.

Utterly beguiling' Joanna Trollope

About the Author
Michele Roberts is the author of eleven highly-acclaimed novels as well as short stories and poetry, most recently collected in All the Selves I Was. Half-English and half-French, she lives in London and Mayenne, France.

Reviews
Remarkable and beautifully written * INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY *
A brave and richly imagined novel, full of thrilling set pieces. The new prestige it seems likely to earn for one of our best writers is long overdue. * GUARDIAN *
Subtle and persuasive * COSMOPOLITAN *
An intense piece of writing, in which the transfigured mundane world of recipes, parental prohibitions and almost ritualised gossip is posed against official purity and religiosity, and shown to be superior. * TLS *


Awards
Winner of WH Smith Literary Prize 1994 and WH Smith Annual Literary Award 1993. Short-listed for Booker Prize for Fiction 1993 and Booker Prize for Fiction 1992.



Book Information
ISBN 9781853816000
Author Michele Roberts
Format Paperback
Page Count 192
Imprint Virago Press Ltd
Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
Weight(grams) 136g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 140mm * 13mm