A traveller on an InterCity train returning to London smells the burn of the breaks as it hisses to a stop in the middle of the countryside. He sees a white-faced woman leap from the train and race to the aid of a sheep stranded on its back, unable to rise, in a field. Righting it, she turns, and he sees her face is full of tragedy. And not, he thinks, because she pulled the emergency lever and will face retribution. Considering tragedies of his own, he does not intrude, but the image lodges in his mind: a strange but familiar despair, unable to ignore the desperation it recognizes in others. From these seeds Mary Wesley draws out a plot of unforgettable impactof loss, of release, of a necessarily comic acceptance of fate, of lovethe "imaginative experience." Rich in character and wit, and powerfully moving, this is a novel of the heart's pain and deliverance."
- ISBN10 0552995924
- ISBN13 9780552995924
- Publish Date 1 January 1995 (first published 3 February 1994)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 8 November 2006
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Transworld Publishers Ltd
- Imprint Black Swan
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 249
- Language English