(Memo to self: I must write reviews as soon as possible, so that my sieve-brain can retain a little information about the book!)

This is a great book, slow to build and deceptively simple & compact. It’s basically a love story between an awkward pair who are on a collision course to decide the fate of a ‘heritage’ bridge in an Australia bush town. There’s probably some deep and meaningful stuff about perfection here which i’ve forgotten/never picked-up (vis a sideline about introducing imperfections into quilts). There’s also a very funny affair between the butcher and bank manager’s wife. My book group loved it, and so did I.

Someone else’s quote; ‘From these two reticent characters, besieged by two lifetimes of regret, doubt and dismay, Grenville manufactures an extraordinary comedy of manners’. I couldn’t have put it better myself!

Released on Friday, December 19, 2003 at Belle-aire Princess hotel in Bangkok, Bangkok Thailand.

Left in the hotel lobby, waiting to go to the airport for onward flight to Sydney