'Vinnie Miner, 54-year-old Anglophile professor, is in London on a six-
month foundation grant. So is her young colleague, Fred Turner. Vinnie is
plain and resignedly self-reliant; Fred is arrestingly handsome and moping
after a breakup with his wife. Vinnie and Fred have love affairs in London.
Fred's is a fraught liaison with an waitress while Vinnie drifts into a
relationship with an engineer from Oklahoma she met on the plane, a brash
uneducated stereotype American who finally beguiles her (and the reader)
with his uncomplicated goodness. . . I devoured the book at a sitting and
then went back for a second dip at once' Penelope Lively, Sunday Telegraph