This almost unbearably exquisite novel features shimmering, lapidary language; minutely observed, palpably real characters; joy and suffering in their purest, most elemental forms; and the mother of all revelations, about three-quarters of the way through. Hazzard's prose demands the complete concentration of even the most erudite reader, but it is a rewarding and even sensual experience to savor her sentences and paragraphs one by one.