Virtue and Rosalind is where our wildest dreams come true. That popular, but not very brilliant, author who's winning all the prizes? Or protagonist will bump her off. Uncle Henri who walked off during a family picnic and never came back? Rather than blame him, she admires the will to radically renounce the past, revisiting the picnic site like sacred ground.
Central to our protagonist's writing life are her relationships with other women, who populate it like meticulous lacemakers in Fellini. They make it all worthwhile, and rather beautiful. They share her love of art - and of keeping an ample distance away from all the rest.
International Booker shortlistee Anne Serre reaffirms herself a master of literary form and innovation. Leaving the reader with the sensation of having absorbed a whole library, Virtue and Rosalind is a dazzling hall of mirrors refracting our darkest desires; secrets we thought we'd never tell. We might not recognise ourselves at first, but by the end of it, we know who we are much better than before.
