Elegance

An enchanting novel brimming with poignancy, humour, enchantment and insight, this is a stunning debut. Imagine an Audrey Hepburn film in the present day... It was a slim, grey volume entitled Elegance. It was buried between a fat, obviously untouched volume on the history of the French monarchy and a dog-eared paperback edition of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love. Deep in the hushed dimness of a second-hand bookshop, Louise Canova discovers a faded hardback. It is an A-Z of how to be elegant, written many years before by a Frenchwoman, Genevieve Antoine Dariaux. As she starts reading, the book's pages whisper something elusive: a way to face up to her unhappy marriage and recapture her self-esteem. 'You can always tell the character of a woman by the care and attention she lavishes on the details of her dress.' From Accessories to Zippers, there is nothing that Madame Dariaux cannot rule upon. Her writing stirs up memories of mothers and daughters, friendships and lovers, and seems to Louise to contain a magic: a wisdom that remains timeless. But changing her wardrobe is not enough. Can Louise pluck up the courage to take the real life lessons captured in the yellowing pages, and act