Temples of Delight

Book excerpt: 'Temples of Delight makes you laugh and it moves you' Sunday Times 'A joyous and winking style reliant on coincidence and irony, sparkling sung ... As messy, glorious and strange as life itself' Lauren Groff Jem is a joyful mystery to Alice: a whirl of glamour, subversion and literary references. And when she disappears from Alice's life, as suddenly as she entered it, Alice is left bereft. But then she meets Giovanni, presumptuous and hectoring, passionate and beautiful, who leads her back to her childhood friend and the mystery and chaos still surrounding her. Alice finds herself being seduced all over again... 'So readable, so full of incidental pleasures and curiosities ... In her readability, her richness, her plain, clear style, Trapido is quite like what Iris Murdoch is supposed to be' Philip Hensher, Guardian 'Very funny ... fizzes along at a cracking pace' Sunday Telegraph 'As lush and original as it is playful and ironic ... Quirky, wise and warm, full of charm and entirely original' San Francisco Chronicle