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A lushly imagined, sensual novel about memory, desire, and the power of storytelling, from a Booker Prize nominee.Geneviève is an outsider, raised in an orphanage, now living an isolated existence as a maid to the widowed Madame Patin in a small French village. A teller and collector of stories, she is entranced by Madame Patin's oft-told folktales, which mask cunning and doom beneath beauty. As Geneviève grows into a woman, her life becomes both more sensual and more dangerous. She flees her village home, escaping to another word-spinner, a poet who captivates women — his mother, his mistress, his niece's governess, and, soon, Geneviève. The poet is kind, but he too is a collector of stories — and sometimes of secrets beyond words.An exquisite, knowing, and irresistible novel, The Looking Glass introduces to an American audience "one of Britian's best novelists" (The Independent on Sunday).Pages of The Looking Glass :