A whistling woman

This work presents the triumphant conclusion to Byatt's quartet depicting the clashing forces in English life from the early 1950s to 1970.

While Frederica - the spirited heroine of "The Virgin in the Garden", "Still Life" and "Babel Tower" - falls almost by accident into a career in television in London, tumultuous events in her home county of Yorkshire threaten to change her life, and those of the people she loves.

In the late 1960s, the world begins to split. Near the university, where the scientists Luk and Jacqueline are studying snails and neurones and the working of the brain, an 'anti-university' springs up.

On the high moors nearby, a gentle therapeutic community is taken over by a turbulent, charismatic leader.

Visions of blood and flames, of mirrors and doubles, share the refracting energy of Frederica's mosaic-like television shows.

The languages of religion, myth and fairy-tale overlap with the terms of science and the new computer age.

Darkness and light are in perpetual tension and the meaning of love itself seems to vanish; people flounder - often comically - to find their true sexual, intellectual and emotional identity.