Harry Gill, a moderately successful writer of historical fiction, has been awarded the annual Watercress-Armstrong Fellowshipa living memorial to the poet, Margaret Rose Hurndell. He arrives in the small French village of Menton, where Hurndell once lived and worked, to write. But the Memorial Room is not suitableit has no electricity or water. Hurndell never wrote here, though it is expected of Harry.Janet Frames previously unpublished novel draws on her own experiences in Menton, France as a Katherine Mansfield Fellow. It is a wonderful social satire, a send-up of the cult of the dead author, andin the best tradition of Framea fascinating exploration of the complexity and the beauty of language.