The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay

Growing up in a Scottish village, best friends with the boys next door, Nina Findlay thinks her life will unfold like an old folktale. But after a serious road accident on a Greek island Nina can't stop obsessing about the details of the past.

"Gillies writes magnificently on everything she touches." - Sunday Times

"A delicate depiction of life, love and possibly madness... Moving and surprising" - Daily Express

Nina Findlay, alluring, accomplished, deluded, always the heroine of her own life, has found an irresistible safety in being adored by two men, brothers she's known since childhood. But when her sister-in-law becomes gravely ill, the triangle that Nina's depended on becomes catastrophically unstable.

The life she's known begins rapidly to unravel, and odd things begin to happen which those around her insist are all in her mind. Separated from her husband, she goes on holiday to a tiny Greek island, the honeymoon island of 25 years earlier, and is involved in a serious road accident. There, while recuperating, she becomes close to her doctor, who's also on the point of divorce. A new relationship seems possible - but what's real in the situation, and what's imagined?

Pressed in at all sides by other people's truths, how can Nina be sure of identifying her own? A diary that was her mother's proves to be a turning point. Perhaps romantic love is always a kind of undiagnosed madness. Face to face with the facts behind her assumptions, the time has come for Nina to unravel the taut knot of her past.