Two lives

Two beautiful, memorable novels in one volume, both focussing on women who retreat into their imaginations until the boundaries between what is real and what is not become blurred.

In "Reading Turgenev", which was shortlisted for the 1991 Booker Prize, an Irish country girl is trapped in a loveless marriage with an older man.

But she finds unusual solace - in secret meetings with a man who shares her passion for Russian novels...The second story, "My House in Umbria" tells how romantic novelist Emily Delahunty helps the survivors of a bomb attack on a train and invents colourful pasts for her convalescent patients.