FROM THE AUTHOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE (1996) AND THE WHITBREAD PRIZE (2003)

''A national treasure . . . She has achieved that rarest of things for a writer'' DAILY TELEGRAPH

''Shena Mackay notices a London that passes most writers by . . . '' PAUL BAILEY, INDEPENDENT

''She writes like an angel wielding a scalpel'' GUARDIAN

New Zealand, 1909. After weeks at sea the new minister, Jack Mackenzie, arrives from Scotland with his unhappy wife and children in tow. A keen naturalist, he is more enthralled by the botanical - and carnal - delights of Dunedin than in the wellbeing of his flock.

In London, eighty years later, Jack Mackenzie''s descendants are middle-aged, searching for a way out of their loneliness. Olive, embittered with her loveless life, steals a baby from a crowded tube; William, distraught at the death of a pupil, abandons his job as headmaster and struggles to fill his empty days. Jay Pascal, a young New Zealand vagrant of mysterious parentage arrives in London, looking for a place where he might belong.