t one point in this slim coming-of-age novel, Rose Tremain’s 17th, the main character, Marianne, is accused by her husband, Hugo, of being “a bloody difficult person to like”. Marianne is genuinely perturbed. She married him more than 10 years before, when she was just 20. It is the early 1970s, Hugo runs a London auction house, and they are in Paris – Marianne has been patiently looking at model puppet theatres all day. She
