Patricia Teeling wants to experience more of life than farming and university, and moves to Dublin to be a science teacher. She quickly finds herself adrift, belonging no more in her country home yet not of the city. She is soon drawn to the married Englishman who lives downstairs. His wife is murdered after she receives obscene telephone calls. Then an attractive man with a limp—­dubbed the Goose­foot—ap­pears.

While the author has an enviable command of English, I found his characters to be tiresome and in­scrutable yet un­ac­count­ably eloquent. Patricia is improbably untouched by the brutal murder of her downstairs neighbor.

Later filmed as The Fantasist, which I dimly remember seeing when it came out and not liking much.

Not rec­om­mend­ed.