Author(s): Sarah Waters

Fiction

Shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. This is the story of four Londoners - three women and a young man with a past - drawn with absolute truth and intimacy. Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war and lived life at full throttle, now dresses in mannish clothes and wanders the streets with a restless hunger, searching... Helen, clever, sweet, much loved, harbours a painful secret... Viv, glamour girl, is stubbornly, even foolishly, loyal to her soldier lover... Duncan, an apparent innocent, has had his own demons to fight during the war. Their lives and their secrets connect in sometimes startling ways. War leads to strange alliances... Tender, tragic and beautifully poignant, set against the backdrop of feats of heroism both epic and ordinary, here is a novel of relationships that offes up subtle surprises and twists. First published February 2006.