A man of about 60 who had read the American edition of this novel — it was published there a couple of months ago — told me lately that it was a ‘grown-up book’. Among other things, I take him to mean that besides recognising the difficulties of love, it embraces them; and that love is not the exclusive domain of the young and frisky.
Toby Maytree is a poet who lives by the beach on Cape Cod.

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