Author(s): Sally Beauman

World fiction

The summer of 1967, in the heart of rural Suffolk: thirteen-year-old Maisie is at her decaying family home, once a medieval abbey. Lucas, an artist and friend, is painting a portrait of Maisie and her elder sisters - arrogant, beautiful Julia and bookish Finn. In turn, Maisie embarks on a portrait of her own: she tells the story of her sisters and their lovers; of her village friend, Daniel Nunn. She describes a lost England and a last summer - golden months in which lives will irrevocably, and terribly, change. Twenty-three years later: it's 1991 in a wintry London. Lucas's now-famous portrait of the three Mortland sisters features in a retrospective of his work. Daniel, down on his luck, obsessed by the sisters and determined to understand what happened that last summer at the Abbey, pursues answers to the past.