A mysterious parcel arrived in my mailbox, peering hard at the label I managed to find that it came from russbaum for my birthday (Oppem group) and I am over the moon to receive it, Gale being one of my favourite writers. Thank you!

It's like opening a drawer and finding a lot of unexpected and sometimes startling things inside: madrigals, planting broccoli on a Cornish farm, cherubism, child abuse, life in Cornwall The dead dog stayed in my mind from beginning to end and I was worried he would be forgotten.

The characters: in London, professional contralto singer Giles, who lives with Julia, who works for Serena, Giles's agent. Giles is separated from his wife Eliza, who is bringing up her deceased sister's 9-year-old daughter Dido (who Giles considers to be his step-daughter).

In Cornwall: Eliza's mother and her next-door neighbour Kitty; Molly the librarian who manages an amateur choir that sing madrigals, her daughter Lucy, same age as Dido, and her lonely bachelor brother Pearce, a farmer who originally wanted to be a vet, and who has an ancient madrigal stashed away in his bible.

Dido is the link between them all, a responsible, well-organized and sometimes headstrong child who has no fear of asking awkward questions no one else dares, or of taking things into her own hands. She would probably have known what to do with the dog.

I felt uneasy with Giles's sexuality (even though it's all his mother's fault), not only his paedophilic leanings but also the way he likes women to be passive - it also annoyed me that Julia accepted to lie there like a marble statue and let him have his pleasure. And even Eliza: "... felt herself watchful and unengaged. But she iked that occasionally. Controlling and giving pleasure could be as rewarding as abandonment to one's own." Well, OK, if you think so...
I did smile at Pearce waking up, "his morning glory nudging by degrees between her thighs while cultured voices urgently discussed terrible events in the other, larger world."
I wish Pearce had been introduced later, around p. 200 (when we realise what he is doing in the book), because the scene with his online date Janet was rather horrible. I would rather not have had Janet in the book at all.
And Julia, quite a deceitful woman who comes across as cold, though there is maybe a glimmer of hope for her at the end.

One thing I found a bit twee, from the editing point of view - all hand-written things (notes and letters) are set in a script typeface; they could have just gone in italics, too many different typefaces being a bit distracting. But this seems to be a new trend, I suppose making use of all the extra stuff we are given with Word.

I shall now go and listen to some madrigals.

I really need to reduce my piles of books; this one was lent to a friend and is now back home; I shall leave it in our free library for another reader.