`A masterly study of grief, memory & love recollected` Professor John Sutherl&, Chair of Judges, Man Booker Prize 2005 When art historian Max Morden returns to the seaside village where he once spent a childhood holiday, he is both escaping from a recent loss & confronting a distant trauma. The Grace family had appeared that long-ago summer as if from another world. Mr & Mrs Grace, with their worldly ease & candour, were unlike any adults he had met before. But it was his contemporaries, the Grace twins Myles & Chloe, who most fascinated Max. He grew to know them intricately, even intimately, & what ensued would haunt him for the rest of his years & shape everything that was to follow. `A novel in which all of his remarkable gifts come together to produce a real work of art, disquieting, beautiful, intelligent, & in the end, surprisingly, offering consolation` Allan Massie, Scotsman ` You can smell & feel & see his world with extraordinary clarity. It is a work of art, & I`ll bet it will still be read & admired in seventy-five years` Rick Gekoski, The Times ` Poetry seems to come easily to Banville. There is so much to applaud in this book that it deserves more than one reading` Literary Review `A brilliant, sensuous, discombobulating novel` Spectator