Virtue and Rosalind

Virtue and Rosalind is where our wildest dreams come true. That popular, but not very brilliant, author who’s winning all the prizes? Our writer-protagonist will bump her off. Uncle Henri who walked off during a family picnic and never came back? Rather than blame him, she admires his will to radically renounce the past for a woman in a red skirt, revisiting the picnic site like sacred ground.

But our heroine has more to accomplish on her present course, which glimmers at every turn with material for new characters, new novels. Central to this are her relationships with other women, who she regards as the finest and most meticulous lacemakers: absorbed in what they’re doing, creating something rather beautiful. They share her love of art – and of keeping an ample distance away from all the rest. After all, our darkest secrets live in the family.

International Booker shortlistee Anne Serre reaffirms herself a master of literary form and innovation. Reading her, we read a hundred books at once. At first we might not recognise ourselves in this dazzling hall of mirrors, but by the end of it, we know just who we are.