Michelle de Kretser's fifth novel is both a delicious satire on the way we live now and a deeply moving examination of the true nature of friendship.

Chief Inspector Bish Ortley of the London Met, divorced and still grieving the death of his son, has been drowning his anger in Scotch. Something has to give, and he's no sooner suspended from the force than a busload of British...

`If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life...' Dorothea is bright, beautiful and rebellious. But their stories do not proceed as expected and both they, and the other inhabitants of Middlemarch, must struggle...