Teacher, Mr Burman, is just about coping with the death of his wife, Ada, in a car accident but amidst his grief, other troubling questions bubble up to the surface. Why wouldn't their grown-up daughter talk to either of them? And could it possibly be his influence that led one of his star pupils to try to blow up St Paul's Cathedral? This book delivers an intriguing meditation on marriage, fatherhood - and architecture!
It was unsettling, the way Ada had opted out of photographs with Leila after that, as if she'd died before her mother, instead of the other way round. Had it been that evening that it began to curdle, whatever it was? Had it not been good?
