This was a very endearing story. It is essentially a story of a married woman’s self discovery, interspersed with astute observations of human feelings and relationships and gorgeous descriptions of the Illyrian landscape. Grace and Nicholas’ relationship was very sweet, and the way they helped each other so sincere, that by the end I felt completely satisfied, and very light hearted.

She had been at Komolac for three days, and she was deeply content to be there. It was with something of the sense of slipping into clear water that she woke, in the mornings in her bare room, seeing from one window the long shadows of the cypresses cutting across the shafts of early light, from the other the olive trees detaching themselves with unwonted precision against a hillside which the morning sun made faintly golden. She lay in bed watching them, her lovely empty day spread ahead of her as wide and still as a lake, which she could explore in any direction; it seemed to her that she had never been happier, never so free.