A Complicated Matter

A young woman''s extraordinary journey of self-discovery and an intimate meditation on what it takes to find our place in the world.

''AN EXTRAORDINARY NEW WRITER'' Nina Stibbe
''FULL OF GRACE AND HUMANITY''Sunday Times

I used to believe the world had been created for me; every stone and grain of sand. As I grew older, I began to think of myself as something tacked on to the edge.

1939, London: From McPhail''s Passage to Kensington''s Grand Palace Hotel, Rose Dunbar is evacuated from her humble home on the Rock of Gibraltar and dropped into a chaotic city of falling bombs, perplexing class rules and bad weather. Despite being ''flagrantly foreign'' to the locals, she becomes an efficient go-between for the upper-class ladies helping out with the war effort and her own tribe of noisy displaced families.

It is only when she is shifted to the countryside to become secretary to the plain-speaking and sightless Major Inc