Virginia

From the award-winning author of Silence in October and Lucca comes the delightful jewel Virginia - a mesmerising novel about love, longing, memory and loss. One summer beside the North Sea, a girl lies sleepless, listening to the engines of British bombers headed for Copenhagen. In another room, a boy is falling in love with her. When one of the planes crashes nearby, the young woman's devotion to the stranded pilot sets the scene for this exquisite fable of betrayal and atonement. In this beautifully crafted story a single moment seems as though it might contain all the possibilities that can be drawn by both memory and imagination. Virginia is a superb novel. Grondahl's style is seductive and irresistible, its complexities so subtly managed that Virginia becomes effortlessly but endlessly satisfying as a literary read. Anyone who enjoys beautifully constructed romances, such as the works of Michelle de Kretser or Delia Falconer, will love Virginia.