Esther Freud interweaves the story of Sarah, an out-of-work actress and unmarried mother, with that of her Jewish ancestors in Germany at the time of the first World War. She writes beautifully, and the beguiling freshness of her style throws the sharpness of her observations into extraordinarily vivid relief. Her two interconnected worlds slowly circle each other, twin planets in an elegantly ordered solar system whose surface perfection is made up of millions of small pinpricks of pain. I found the ending disappointing - but perhaps that was just because I couldn't bear any ending for this wonderful little book.
