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I was in the doctor’s office when the receptionist glanced at my book and asked if it was good? I had read about two-thirds of it and answered rather awkwardly, yes. What is it about? A thriller? A mystery? I answered it’s about people. Yes, about people talking about people. Ah, she replied and went back to her work. Obviously not what she wanted to hear.

In fact people talking about people is exactly what the book is. The outline is what describes our narrator. She has no name. She goes to Athens to teach a writing course. She lives in an apartment. She has children back in England and was married. Everything else fills up her outline.

She meets a passenger on the plane. His name is simply “her neighbor.�� He is Greek, been married three times. He has a boat. Come spend a day swimming in the Aegean? he asks.

Her class. A collection of characters all wanting to learn the art of writing. Tell me a story about how you got to school that day? An animal?

This evokes Homer, where the Odyssey and the Iliad were told orally. A series of stories told slung together with a common theme. Can’t get more Greek than this.

Writers. Editors. Men. Women. Marriage and divorce. Love and love’s lost. Pain, loss, and children. Raw honesty. Hidden truths. Greek food and wine. The sun. The heat. Summertime.

Ingenious. Brilliant. A compulsive read. So very good.