This is a novel full of charm and good humour and teeming with memorable and eccentric characters. It is about love (and hate) and marriage, about renovating an old building, about strange magical forces at work in a beautifully evoked English country setting. In J M Forrest’s world, the person sitting next to you in the pub or café or on the bench on the village green may just turn out to be an angel fulfilling his destiny – and messing about with yours. A novel that concerns itself with small things and great ones and the relationship between the two, with generosity and meanness, and above all with how kindness and caring can bind a community together.