First published 2000
Sixteen-year-old Portia arrives in London after her father's death, suddenly dependent on her half-brother Thomas and his wife Anna. Thrust into their sterile, emotionally guarded world, she becomes an uncomfortable witness to the brittle social conventions of 1930s upper-middle-class England. When Portia falls for Eddie, a charming but unreliable young man connected to the household, she sets in motion a series of revelations that will strip away the polite veneer of her new family's existence. Her naive romanticism collides violently with the calculated emotional restraint of her hosts, threatening to expose long-buried tensions and unspoken resentments. As each character's true nature emerges, Portia learns the brutal lesson that human connections are rarely pure or unconditional.
Genres: literary-fiction, domestic-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Paris
Period: 20th-Century
418 pages · Paperback · Anchor Books