Yvette is the daughter of a vicar and of She-Who-Was-Cynthia, who left them for her young lover. Yvette lives in a small cottage with her father, her uncle, her aunt, her grandmother and her sister. A cramped space where her grandmother, Mater, rules the universe of everybody. She craves liberty and frivolity. A handsome gipsy will pleasantly upset her life and wake up her sensuality. A short novel where nothing really happens and with a curious ending.
“I’m not sure one shouldn’t have one’s fling till one is twenty-six, and then give in, and marry!’
This was Lucille’s philosophy, learned from older women. Yvette was twenty-one. It meant she had five more years in which to have this precious fling. And the fling meant, at the moment, the gipsy. The marriage, at the age of twenty-six, meant Leo or Gerry.
So, a woman could eat her cake and have her bread and butter.”