An amazing debut and a bravura first novel, this is the fictional recreation of a relationahip told through an encyclopaedia of snow and its history. Touching, inventive and funny, and brimming with originality and wit, it heralds the start of an auspicious literary career, along the lines of a female Julian Barnes.A lost notebook is discovered, its pages filled with an encyclopaedic array of entries about snow. Leafing through each item in turn, it gradually becomes apparent that the selection is not as haphazard as first glances might suggest. Scientific description, historical accounts and fantastical incidents slowly, teasingly unfold to reveal a series of love-stories. At the heart of these is one particular story, a record of one particular relationship, and it becomes clear by the end of the book that the unnamed editor's work is intended as a love-letter, fastidiously elegant, beautiful and - in places - almost unbearably bleak.