Sylvia, a young, highly competent eye surgeon in 1990s London, stumbles into love and motherhood and discovers she is terrified of both. Ruby, a 1950s suburban housewife, begins receiving poison pen letters; her interior life is so distorted by rage and shame that she actually believes she deserves them. Iris, the gentle young nurse who attends to Ruby's son after an accident, falls in love with a handsome, upper-middle-class medical student. But Iris is working class and will have to overcome forces of snobbery to achieve the safety and love she so desperately craves. Over the course of this gripping, intricately plotted story, the subtle connections between these three women are gradually and surprisingly revealed as Ferguson masterfully illustrates the role random fate plays in human life.
