“A devastating account of the sexual awakening of an English lady . . . An intense, fastidiously crafted and disturbing novel.” —Publishers Weekly From the “brilliant forgotten novelist” behind the “ferocious” Lord Jim at Home (The Telegraph) comes a searing tale of a young woman’s unravelling beneath the unforgiving Tuscan sun. Miranda, her husband Louis, and their infant daughter are set to spend the summer in a rented villa in Tuscany. He’s a self-assured young American actor; she, a well-educated, well-bred English ingénue. But when Louis is called away to a shoot, Miranda is left alone with her baby in the remote Italian countryside—until a young Italian named Oreste arrives, claiming to have been invited by her now-absent husband. Miranda quickly falls under the interloper’s spell—and into his arms—launching into a feverish affair that threatens to dissolve her already fragile, fracturing sense of self. As events spiral further out of her control, the novel hurtles headlong toward its horrifying conclusion. Written in the same “limpid, assured style: cruel, yes, but not detached or apathetic” (Harper’s Magazine) as Lord Jim at Home, Dinah Brooke’s transgressive debut remains every bit as shocking as when it was first published in 1971.
