FROM THE GLOBALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING‘Bittersweet … dazzling' Guardian‘Deeply pleasurable … the ending made me cry' The Times‘Told with a wealth of detail and narrative intensity' Penelope Lively Violet is 39.She lost her fiancé in the Great War.She is considered a ‘surplus woman'.But Violet is also fiercely independent, intelligent and determined. Escaping her suffocating mother, she moves to Winchester to start a new life – an endeavour which will require courage, resilience and a series of quiet rebellions…