Bowen's amazingly controlled novel, very sad, of two children lost in the complexities of adults' lives. Secrets and lies... The time shift works very well, and both layers of the story are intrigued me equally. ( )

I really enjoyed the first half of the novel, where the focus is on the two children, Henrietta and Leopold, and their precocious and tentative interactions with each other. However, I sort of lost interest when the narrative moved back in time to tell the story of Leopold's genetic background, mostly because Leopold is so much more interesting and amusing than his parents, whose mundane love affair is the subject of the second half of the book. The novel would have been more interesting, entertaining, and original if it had kept its focus on the children. ( )