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Gay abandon: Islands of Mercy, by Rose Tremain, reviewed

12 September 2020

9:00 AM

12 September 2020

9:00 AM

Islands of Mercy Rose Tremain

Chatto, pp.368, 18.99

Rose Tremain has followed her masterly The Gustav Sonata with an altogether different novel. In 1865, Clorinda Morrissey, a 38-year-old woman from Dublin, arrives in Bath and sells a ruby necklace in order to set up Mrs Morrissey’s High Class Tea Rooms. Mrs Morrissey believes that ‘the future was going to be perfumed with raspberry jam and freshly baked scones and fragrant lemon cake’.

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