This is a quiet, tender story about an ordinary woman, wife, mother, and the gap that her absence leaves in the family. Set in November 1918, it's no surprise when Spanish Flu comes to town... but, then, this isn't a plot-driven novel. The structure is like a triptych: we see events from the PoV of 8-year old Bunny (self-consciously modelled on Proust's Marcel in the first book?), then his older brother and, finally, their father. For me, Bunny's section was wonderful, the later two not quite as good.

Maxwell's writing is elegant and sensitive, but the way he captures Bunny and the mother through Bunny's eyes isn't duplicated as strongly in the later sections. Still, a lovely portrait of an ordinary family and an ordinary tragedy, one duplicated in its millions during the 1918 epidemic.