Publisher's Synopsis
"My favourite writer, and the best line-and-length novelist in the world." INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY Michael and Pauline seemed like the perfect couple - young, good-looking, made for each other. The moment she walked into his mother's grocery store in the Polish quarter of Baltimore, he was smitten. And in the heat of World War II fervour, they marry in haste. Pauline, impulsive, volatile, impractical, tumbles hit-or-miss through life; Michael, plodding, cautious and judgmental, proceeds deliberately. In time their foolish quarrels take their toll. A seventeen-year-old daughter disappears, and some years later this fractious pair is forced to take on parenthood all over again. Caught in what feels like a practice marriage, they seem to be tearing each other apart - until someone, unexpectedly, shockingly, kicks over the traces.
