Fiction

In structure and design, this small and exquisite novel is markedly different from Ian McEwan's magisterial "Atonement," but it still possesses the author's moody worldview, wherein beauty and human intimacy are frailties too often crushed by chance. A newly married couple in mid-20th-century England, bringing their worries and their pasts to their wedding night, try only to connect. The result is a cello suite of sadness, encompassing an entire swatch of English culture and the legacy of roads not taken.

—Gail Caldwell / Globe Staff

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