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“There is a game which children play in which they creep up to one who is hiding his eyes; step by step, frozen still with innocence at each quick glance they go tentatively forward, until at last they grow close, close to the point of touching.��

I think this might be my second favorite Taylor novel so far, right after Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. They are similar in a way, as they deal with regret, about adjusting to what life has brought us, something not what we expected.

In this story, we meet Harriet, who is infatuated with the aloof and troubled Vesey. Their connection is her mother Lilian and his Aunt Caroline, old friends from their days as suffragettes. Harriet and Vesey are eighteen, and spending a last of many summers together at Caroline’s, where Harriet is paid to help to care for her children, and Vesey is sent to escape his own unreliable mother. They meet again many years later, after Harriet has married and has a teenaged daughter of her own.

Around Harriet and Vesey Taylor gives us a diverse set of characters who are experiencing their own very different regrets, with unexpected layers revealed about each of them. There is a comically real group of ladies Harriet works with in a dress shop, her sadly dull husband Charles, the couples�� closest friends Kitty and Tiny, Charles�� overly-dramatic mother, and their daughter Betsy who is going through obsessions of her own. Each of these characters feels whole and unique, and each provides us ambiguity and surprises.

I think what Taylor is so good at is showing us something we often forget about ourselves and our fellow humans. Her characters are often average and not always likable, just like us. What she uncovers, what we forget sometimes, is the uniqueness, the beauty in the ordinary. These surprises, along with the open-endedness of her characters�� stories, make the reading experience authentic but strangely magical at the same time.

��'There is no one else like me,�� she told herself. ‘I represent no one. I am typical of no one. No one else thinks my thoughts or understands my hopes or shares my guilt. I am both better and worse than I would admit to other people.’��

An odd but curiously moving story from a remarkably talented writer.