By Philippa Tracy
In this novel, set in the mid-19th century with a cast of many characters the most interesting ones are the women. There is Clorinda Morrissey, who comes to Bath from Dublin to reinvent herself as a widow, because, at the time “widows survived far more cleverly in English society than spinsters.” She opens a tearoom where “humanity came gathering to her sheltering bosom.” Her story is interlinked
