World Before Us The

Product Description

In 1877 a woman walks out of an asylum in the remote Yorkshire countryside, slipping into the woods and out of the pages of history forever. Over a hundred years later, in the same stretch of tangled woodland, fifteen-year-old Jane takes her eyes off the little girl she's babysitting for a moment and the girl is gone, never to be found again.

The tragedy haunts Jane for years. As an adult she takes a job in a London museum, burying herself in its dusty archives, unsure quite what she hopes to find. And it is there that Jane begins to unravel the strange mystery which connects the Victorian asylum, the old museum, and her own troubled past . . .

'A novel of considerable beauty . . . reminiscent of A. S. Byatt's Possession.' Globe and Mail

'A work of great power . . . on life, death and the potency of memory.' Guardian

'An original, intelligent novel about the past and its persistent power in the present.' Sunday Times

'Beguiling . . . Everything is an echo of something else in this richly suggestive novel about memory and grief.' Metro