ABOUT
THE BOOK

Set between the 1930s,and the present, Maggie O`Farrell`s new novel is the story of Esme, a woman edited out of her family`s history, and of the secrets that come to light when, sixty years later, she is released from care, and a young woman, Iris, discovers the great aunt she never knew she had. The mystery that unfolds is the heartbreaking tale of two sisters in colonial India and 1930s Edinburgh – of the loneliness that binds them together and the rivalries that drive them apart, and lead one of them to a shocking betrayal – but above all it is the story of Esme, a fiercely intelligent, unconventional young woman, and of the terrible price she is made to pay for her family`s unhappiness. This is vintage Maggie O`Farrell: an impassioned, intense, haunting family drama – a stunning imagining of a life stolen, and reclaimed.