On the very day he is released from prison Leonardo learns of his parents deaths in a car crash. Now a rich young man, he returns to their empty town house, but he has a life to reconstruct out of shards and fragments. At first, all he wants is to be alone in the big house, looking over books, papers and diaries, and old photographs, the mute witnesses to his own childhood and his parents wretched marriage. Then his thoughts begin to concentrate on the Quinta Blanca, the white house by the cliff edge, where, when he was a child, his now dead grandmother nourished him on stories and fairy tales, especially on Hans Christian Andersen s The Snow Queen . When Leonardo revisits this childhood home as the guest of the new owner, Casilda, he too has the sliver of ice removed from his heart and his redemption is at hand.
- ISBN10 1860463584
- ISBN13 9781860463587
- Publish Date 18 March 1999
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 26 March 2013
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Vintage Publishing
- Imprint The Harvill Press
- Format Paperback (UK Trade)
- Pages 336
- Language English