I think I ought to start keeping track of all the Miranda’s I find in books. There are many more of them in fiction than there are in real life.

The Miranda in this book is the eighteen year old daughter of the protagonist, and I confess that I thought the book might be a bit of a tough read when the jacket copy told me that this Miranda got killed in a sailing accident. Tough just because of the naming coincidence with my daughter rather than just because of the death of a child. All Forster’s books seem to revolve around death one way or another so by now I was expecting that to be the theme.

The family here aren’t recovering very well from the bereavement, the children are finding it easier to cope with than the parents, and it’s the shifts in the relationships between the family members that make it really interesting reading.