Beyond the Glass

Clara Batchelor is 22. Her brief, doomed marriage to Archie over, she returns to live with her parents in the home of her childhood. She hopes for comfort, but the devoutly Catholic household confines her and forms a dangerous glass wall of guilt and repression between Clara and the outside world. Clara both longs for and fears what lies beyond, yet when she escapes into an exhilarating and passionate love affair, her fragile identity cracks. An extraordinary portrayal of a woman's descent into madness, this novel completes Antonia White's brilliant "May Quartet."