A traveller on an InterCity train returning to London smells the\nburn of brakes as it hisses to a stop in the middle of the\ncountryside. He sees a white-faced woman leap from the train and\nrace to the aid of a sheep stranded on its back in a field, unable\nto rise. Righting it, the woman turns, and he sees her face is full\nof tragedy.

\n
\n

Considering tragedies of his own, he does not intrude, but the\nimage lodges in his mind: a strange but familiar despair, unable,\ndespite itself, to ignore the desperation it recognizes in others.\nFrom these seeds Mary Wesley draws out a plot of an unforgettable\nimpact: of loss, of release, of a necessarily comic acceptance of\nfate, of love — “the imaginative experience.”

\n
\n

Rich in character and wit, and powerfully moving, this is a\nnovel of the heart’s pain and deliverance.

\n\n