Eustace Damier is a man haunted by the past, though not his own. In the faded drawing room of his mother's friend, he discovers a photograph of Clara Chanfrey, a woman from the 1860s who defied convention and eloped with a French artist. Struck by something ineffable in her image, Damier begins to unravel Clara's story, reaching out through mutual acquaintances to learn more about her difficult past and the nature of her marriage. What starts as historical curiosity becomes something deeper as Damier finds himself drawn into Clara's world, and increasingly into the life of her daughter, Claire. The novel traces the delicate surgery of memory and projection: how we construct romantic ideals of those who came before us, and whether the past can ever truly be recovered or only imaginatively reinvented. Sedgwick writes with quiet precision about the gap between living in the present and being seduced by the past's melancholic grace.
