Virago Modern Classics

ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE BRITISH WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

''Lehmann legitimised a type of writing that took on deep personal themes'' ENGLISH PEN

''Full of her sensibility, her funniness, her own peculiar acumen'' ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD

''Lehmann has always written brilliantly of women in love'' MARGARET DRABBLE

Two sisters: Madeleine and Dinah. One husband: Rickie Masters. For many years now, Dinah, exotic and sensual, has conducted a clandestine affair with Rickie. Madeleine, calm and resolute, has accepted that her marriage has been of limited success. Rickie''s sudden death makes widows of both sisters in this highly imaginative novel that explores with extraordinary insight the sublimity, the rivalry and the pain of personal relationships.

''She makes a mood, an atmosphere, which is never forgotten . . . The inner voice of women talking to themselves about their love affairs, knowing that it is hopeless, having to go ahead anyway, expecting the end as soon as it begins. That, of course, is what Rosamond Lehmann does best'' SUNDAY TIMES