One of the most consistently compelling writers in contemporary fiction is back with a wise and unsettling tale of the power and the poison of love."It's crazy thinking I can tell her," says Genevieve Warner, thirty-two years old, thirteen years into a loveless marriage, and recently swept into her first passionate love affair. "She's so old. She'll have forgotten what sex is."But Stella Newland, the gracious, dignified, dying woman who Genevieve cares for in an English nursing home, has not forgotten. She knows all about love: its promises, its betrayals, its sometimes deadly consequences. She learned her lessons thirty years ago in a country house she owned, and owns still. When Genevieve confides in Stella, the old woman reciprocates by giving Genevieve the key to the now forlorn house, and by telling this young woman who will be her last friend, in the few minutes a day her failing strength allows, the story of her own erotic entanglement in adultery and worse, much worse. Read Less