The sudden death of Thaddeus Devenant's wife leaves him with the problem of childcare for baby Georgina. When none of the nannies interviewed is deemed suitable, Mrs Iveson, Thaddeus's mother-in-law, fulfils the position herself. But in rejecting one of the applicants, they have overlooked the beginnings of a fixed and unnatural obsession...
William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, Ireland in 1928. He is the author of fourteen much-lauded novels: he won the Whitbread Prize three times and was short-listed for the Booker Prize four times, most recently with The Story of Lucy Gault in 2002. Trevor was widely recognized to be one of the greatest short-story writers in the English language. In 1999, William Trevor received the prestigious David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime's literary achievement, and in 2002 he was awarded an honorary knighthood for his services to literature. He died in 2016.
