This is a novel with real weight to it. Not the size of the book, but its the breadth and depth of the writing that makes everyone and everything in it feel three dimensional. At times I could almost feel the heat coming off the characters and see the emotion in their eyes. It's about a girl who feels she has been born in the wrong body and should have entered the world as a boy, but before you start thinking that Rose Tremain has jumped on some kind of fashionable bandwagon, please note that this novel was originally published in 1992. That was over twenty years before Caitlin Jenner transitioned, and at a time when most people were only vaguely aware of one or two trans people in the public eye who they probably regarded as some kind of novelty. In the book, we meet Mary as a six year child who lives on a farm in Suffolk with her parents, but both of them have issues with their mental health and life becomes a daily battle. her mother seems trapped i...