This book is about a journey, and like time, it doesn't flow, it pulses. The story is intuited through the senses of a blind Greek ex-voto merchant who sells a charm to the bride's father, Jean and the reader travels with him, his ex-wife Zdena and his daughter, separately across Europe to arrive where the Po meets the sea for the marriage of Gino and the ill-fated Ninon. It's a carpe diem story, a tragedy with a lot of hope in it. God is in the detail and it's the small gesture, the personal story that is always the cornerstone of Berger's writing. It's purely coincidental I'm reading this novel alongside Herve Guibert's 'To the friend who didn't save my life', penned six years previous - some of the parallels are astounding.