English correspondence

the long version

"Sylvie is half French and half English. Since the death of her mother, she has written weekly letters to her father in London. When he too dies unexpectedly, she waits for the letter she knows he must have posted before his death. And, as she waits, her carefully ordered and controlled life finally begins to unravel." "Janet Davey's novel has the deceptive simplicity of a perfect piece of chamber music. Set in the Meuse - a place in France that is on the way to everywhere else but nowhere in itself - it involves a small cast of characters who move around each other in a complex game of emotional chess. Sylvie and her husband own a small hotel. He cooks; she runs it. Their lives are lived in public, as if they are permanently on stage - not ideal if your marriage is crumbling. The death of both her parents crystallizes Sylvie's sense that she has made all the wrong choices. But to change anything would bring the whole fragile card tower tumbling down."--BOOK JACKET.