"Byatt is a wonderful writer, constantly engaging wherever she takes us."
Times (London)

In this intoxicating novel, Frederica falls almost by accident into a career in television in London,
while tumultuous events in her home county of Yorkshire threaten to change her life and those
of the people she loves. In the late 1960s, the world begins to split. The languages of religion,
myth, and fairytale overlap with the terms of science and the new computer age. The meaning
of love itself seems to vanish and people flounderoften comicallywhile searching for their true
sexual, intellectual, and emotional identities.

Through the author's wayward, lovingly drawn characters and breathtaking twists of plot, she
illuminates the effervescence of the 1960s, both its excitements and its dangers, as no one has
done before.