Orange Prize winner and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008 Linda Granthas created an enchanting portrait of a woman who having endured unbearableloss fin... » 

Orange Prize winner and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008 Linda Granthas created an enchanting portrait of a woman who having endured unbearableloss finds solace in the family secrets her estranged uncle reveals. In vividand supple prose Grant subtly constructs a powerful story of family love andthe hold the past has on the present.Vivien Kovacs a sensitive bookish girl grows up sealed off from the world byher timid Hungarian refugee parents who conceal the details of their historyand shy away from any encounter with the outside world. She learns how tonavigate British society from an eccentric cast of neighbors including afading ballerina a cartoonist and a sad woman who wanders the city andteaches Vivien to be beautiful. She loses herself in books and reinventsherself according to her favorite characters but it is through clothes thatshe ultimately defines herself.Against her fathers wishes she forges a relationship with her uncle anotorious criminal and slum landlord who in his old age wants to share hislife story. As he exposes the truth about her familys past Vivien learns howto be comfortable in her own skin and how to be alive in the world.Grant is a spectacularly humanizing writer whose morally complex charactersexplore the line between selfishness and selfpreservation. «