In a saga sparkling with wisdom, wit and style, Linn Ullmann explores the emotional terrain of marriage and motherhood with wicked humour and a tender eye for human frailty.

`Striking . . . a haunted, melancholy story of wandering parents and wayward children, and the ways they permeate one another's past and future' Sylvia Brownrigg, Independent

`A wonderful novel . . . Ullmann has an extraordinary touch' Gaby Wood, Observer

`A seriously well-written meditation on seduction, family, and the need to find a home. It ranges in style from carnivalesque debauchery to stone-cold, limpid realism, all apparently glittering with an insouciant application of fantasy' Herald