"Flying over the jagged teeth of the Alps I swigged gina and tonic, celebrating my departure for that land which so many English people saw as paradise, a returen to the Golden Age, a mythical site offering personal transformation, rapture, and radical change, let alone excellent shopping in the shape of well-cut clothes and stylish leather handbags." Quite.
Only not quite for Aurora. After three abruptly ended marriages-hippie husband Tim, stoned one minute and dead the next, fell off a balcony; architectural historian Cecil fell into Venice's Grand Canal (he couldn't swim): tax inspector Hugh fell off a cliff at Land's End, Aurora is ready to lose her dreary black trouser-suit and kickover a few distressing traces. Myths, though, have a way of being subverted by reality for Aurora.
It's her new eau de nil frock that she sheds, however, when she finds herself in the hotel room of the disconcertingly magnetic Father Michael. He's wearing yellow paisley socks. He also rides a Harley Davidson, and he may not be a priest at all. Nor may the charming, exquisitely tailored museum director, Frederico Pagan, be quite so thoroughly heterosexually disinclineded as Aurora thinks. One thing is certain, Aurora's old friend and erstwhile radical feminist Lenora is now the local convent's abbess, even if Aurora can't imagine what an abbess might want with a gun.
What she can imagine, vividly, by the end of this nimble, wildly entertaining and ironic tale, is exactly what to do with that gun.
Only not quite for Aurora. After three abruptly ended marriages-hippie husband Tim, stoned one minute and dead the next, fell off a balcony; architectural historian Cecil fell into Venice's Grand Canal (he couldn't swim): tax inspector Hugh fell off a cliff at Land's End, Aurora is ready to lose her dreary black trouser-suit and kickover a few distressing traces. Myths, though, have a way of being subverted by reality for Aurora.
It's her new eau de nil frock that she sheds, however, when she finds herself in the hotel room of the disconcertingly magnetic Father Michael. He's wearing yellow paisley socks. He also rides a Harley Davidson, and he may not be a priest at all. Nor may the charming, exquisitely tailored museum director, Frederico Pagan, be quite so thoroughly heterosexually disinclineded as Aurora thinks. One thing is certain, Aurora's old friend and erstwhile radical feminist Lenora is now the local convent's abbess, even if Aurora can't imagine what an abbess might want with a gun.
What she can imagine, vividly, by the end of this nimble, wildly entertaining and ironic tale, is exactly what to do with that gun.
