Dunedin

Rich, vivid and dazzlingly funny, Shena Mackay's brilliant novel opens in 19th century New Zealand. Jack Mackenzie, the Presbyterian minister newly arrived from Scotland with his unhappy wife, enjoys the pleasures, botanical and carnal, that Dunedin offers. His expulsion from his naturalist's Eden has consequences he never dreams of. Decades later, in London, his grandchildren, middle-aged and with life evaporating before them, search for love. Olive, embittered and lonely, tries to find it with Terry, an ambitious young writer in flight from his aged parents' mobile home, and more dangerously, with a baby she snatches on a crowded tube train. Her brother William, desiccated with grief for the death of a former pupil, has abandoned his job as headmaster. There is also Jay Pascal, a young New Zealand vagrant of mysterious parentage, whose sad plight to find belonging sears the heart.