I am a reading girl, with a pale face, and glasses. People who become enthralled by the world of books, as I am, are often thought to have dull lives, but I feel that my own life is made of the stuff of myth. Or anyway, I intend to make it so. So this is my story. It will be about birth & death and love & sex. I will make it something after my own heart, tender and dark, a little candlelight novel, started this late summer night.

Sophie is a 21-year-old single mother and this beautifully written novel explores her relationships in all their surprising and sensuous complexities.