This is a really an unputdownable book, and quite a quick read despite being over 600 pages long. I have to say I liked it much more than House at Riverton. The plot is a fascinating one, and the narrative moves back and forth in time. We meet Nell as a young child, a woman in her sixties and as she lies dying aged 95. The action takes us from Brisbane Australia in 2005, and the 1970's, to the London of 1900 and 2005, and also to cornwall of the early 1900's and the 1970's and again 2005. The novel has many secrets to reveal, which is what makes it so hard to put down. The span of the story itself is huge, the historical details fit, and the characters seem on the whole realisitic.