Emma Roberts leaves her home for the first time in her twenties, travelling to Paris to study seventeeth-century garden design. There, she meetss vivacious Fracoise Desnoyers and is quickly drawn into her passionate and complicated world. But Francoise's demands - deceiving her formidable mother over a love affair - leave Emma feling exposed and vulnerable, and yearning for the safety and comfort of her London home . Yet where an unexpected family tragedy turns that life upside down. Emma comes to realize the impossibilty of returning to a home you have already left behind.... "Spare and devastating. Powerful. Brookner is an unfliching novelist who writes beautifully and fearlessly" - Independent "Elgiac.. its magnifcent final sentence is among the most moving of Brookerian conclusions" - New Statesman "Clever and elegant" - Sunday Times "Brookner is brilliant ... readers will not be disapppointed. Her women are very real, more recognizable and more human than any obviously loveable character could hope to be" - Sunday Herald "So well done - so carefully is the novel wrought - that reading it offers deep and enduring pleasure" - Scotsman