Betty Desmond is twenty-one and already bored of life in her provincial corner of England, where the most exciting event is reading stories at Mother's Meeting. She has artistic aspirations she can't quite name and a restless hunger for something, anything, to happen. Then she meets Eustace Vernon, a mysterious artist with knowing eyes and an air of worldly experience that makes her feel like every moment before him was a dull rehearsal. What follows is a delicate, often painful dance of attraction between a woman who doesn't understand her own power and a man who may not deserve it. Nesbit, better known for her children's classics, writes with sharp psychological insight about the awkward grammar of first love, the way desire makes fools of the earnest, and the terrible gap between what we imagine romance will be and what it actually costs. It's a period romance with teeth, interested in how much of ourselves we lose trying to become someone worthy of being loved.
