Ali views the inhabitants of her Mamarrosa with a warm and sympathetic eye, everyone has a vivid life on the page. It is also part of Ali's gift that she never allows the reader to come to easy conclmiom.The village is no rural idyll - but neither is it bereft of pleasure or culture. The same compassionate respect for complexity governs her creation of character. As a novelist, All is not like her fictional novelist, Stanton, who pals around with the Ports family in order "to see the demons at work"

For some, Mamarrosa is a place you merely pass through. For others it is somewhere from which you want to escape. Some people come here to disappear. A small town in rural Portugal,it is on the way to other places, but you rarely stop there.And those who do usually have a reason.

Men and women, children and old people all tell their stories,piece by piece, locals, expatriates, tourists alike, and in so doing assemble the story of the town itself, a tale of exile and belonging, rich with resonance and regret.