The Looking Glass

A lushly imagined sensual novel about memory desire and the power of storytelling from a Booker Prize nominee.Geneviève is an outsider raised in an orphanage now living an isolated existence as a maid to the widowed Madame Patin in a small French village. A teller and collector of stories she is entranced by Madame Patin''s oft-told folktales which mask cunning and doom beneath beauty. As Geneviève grows into a woman her life becomes both more sensual and more dangerous. She flees her village home escaping to another word-spinner a poet who captivates women -- his mother his mistress his niece''s governess and soon Geneviève. The poet is kind but he too is a collector of stories -- and sometimes of secrets beyond words.An exquisite knowing and irresistible novel The Looking Glass introduces to an American audience one of Britian''s best novelists (The Independent on Sunday).