Author(s): Gwenyth Perry

NZ Fiction

This fourth novel by Gwenyth Perry again has a strong French flavour.

Chris feels that she has lost everything that matters, and sets off to France on a genealogical search for her own ancestry and a possible link to a medieval French woman writer, Christine de Pisan, who begins go dominate her research and her own writing. A friend from the past interrupts her solitude in Paris and she moves on to the vibrant culture of Brittany.

The novel asks questions about women's lives that will find a response in most readers, looking at guilt and responsibility, family relationships and lighter links, highlighted by the parallel life of a woman in the Middle Ages, some of whose problems may not be so far removed from those of the modern woman.