Love and Summer

''A master of both language and storytelling'' HILARY MANTEL

''Compact and ordinary, it was a town in a hollow that had grown up there for no reason that anyone knew or wondered about . . .''

Rathmoye, Ireland, in the middle of the last century, and into town comes a stranger on the day of Eileen Connulty''s funeral. Taking unwanted and unasked for photographs, Florian Kilderry upsets its carefully settled status quo. But Ellie, a young convent girl married to a farmer still mourning his first wife, cannot help but be drawn to this trespassing youth. Over the course of a long, warm summer Ellie and Florian form an attachment that sleepy Rathmoye cannot ignore . . .

''Unbearably moving'' Spectator