The Spiral House, by Claire Robertson (used)

'As you know, a head is a deal heavier than it looks. That is one reason you do not want to drop it anywhere near your feet. Another is that it takes a long age to push it back in shape if it should fall on its sides or on the back. The face matters less but the sides and the back take an age to put right.'

Katrijn van der Caab, freed slave and wigmaker's apprentice, travels with her eccentric employer from Cape Town to Vogelzang, a remote farm where a hairless girl needs their services. The year is 1794, it is the age of enlightenment, and on Vogelzang the master is conducting strange experiments in human breeding and classification. It is also here that Trijn falls in love.

Two hundred years later and a thousand miles away, Sister Vergilius, a nun at a mission hospital, wants to free herself from an austere order. It is 1961 and her life intertwines with that of a gentleman farmer - an Englishman and suspected Communist - who collects and studies insects and lives a solitary life. While a group of Americans arrive in a cavalcade of caravans and a new public is about to be born, desire is unfurling slowly.In Claire Robertson's majestic debut novel, two stories echo across centuries to expose that which binds us and sets us free.

Condition: very good