A major new work by the bestselling author of A Vicious Circle, on a larger scale and more serious than her previous fiction, but with her characteristic satirical edge and page-turningly suspenseful plotting. Benedick Hunter is a failure. A divorced father and unemployed actor sunk in self-pity, his life takes a new direction when he finds a book of his dead mother's fairy-tales in which real people and events from a tragic past seem to be depicted. Hunter embarks on a bizarre and darkly comic quest which takes him and his small son Cosmo to America -- to the heart of parenthood, manic depression, fairy-tales and love.