Description: On a midsummer's evening in the English countryside, the Palmer family is playing a dinner-party game: What kind of society would you accept without knowing your place in it? But the game quickly gives way to the more pressing problem of the Palmers' eccentric mother, Frieda, an eminent author who has fled them to take residence in a remote, crumbling old hotel by the sea. What is to become of this mother of theirs, who has always been a powerful and puzzling figure? Why has she disappeared? Has the dark spirit of Exmoor finally driven her mad? Margaret Drabble explores these questions and more in a dazzling, wickedly gothic tale that is witty, moving, and utterly original.

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