INTRODUCED BY SALLEY VICKERS 'Her best [novels] are sheer delight, and all of them companionable. Quiet, paradoxical, funny and sad, they have the iron in them of permanence too' JOHN UPDIKE, NEW YORKER Catherine Oliphant is a writer and lives with handsome anthropologist Tom Mallow. Their relationship runs into trouble when he begins a romance with student Deirdre Swann, so Catherine turns her attention to the reclusive anthropologist Alaric Lydgate, who has a fondness for wearing African masks. Added to this love tangle are the activities of Deirdre's fellow students and their attempts to win the competition for a research grant. The course of true love or academia never did run smooth. 'She can be seriously, hilariously funny - no other novelist has celebrated our national silliness with such exuberance' KATE SAUNDERS 'I am a huge fan of Barbara Pym' RICHARD OSMAN