Julia Garnet ('Miss, not Mrs') is a retired history teacher. She has never fallen in love, she is a communist, and her only real friend has just died. As a result she rents out her apartment in London and travels to Venice to stay there for six months in an aprtment near the Campo Angelo Raffaele. The sculpture outside featuring the Angel Raphael, a boy holding a large fish, and a dog, sparks her interest and sets her on a quest to discover what it means.

On the way she discovers for the first time how alone she has been, love, and the bitterness of betrayel. Miss Garent's story is onterwoven with a re-telling of the Book of Tobit, a lost tale from the authorised version of the James I bible. Slowly parallels develop between the two stories. On the way Julia 'finds' religion. This is handled well; there is no complete giving up of her atheist values, but more a re-assessment and understanding of why religion is important. The beauty of Venice evokes in her spirit an awakening to the beauty that surrounds her. Despite many of Julia's moves towards enlightment and inclusion within the world (as oppossed to self-imposed exile), there always remains an alieness around her character. You support her, and want her to succeed, while understanding that she is not a hero, but a victim, and that she is not the most likeable of people. Sally Vickers displays humanity in all its bitterness and ego-loving self. The intrusion of the real world on Miss Garnet's always comes as a shock - a brutal ripping and shredding into her world; the outside slightly out of her grasp to understand. She can function in it, but is never wholly part of it.

The book drags you through, to find out what will happen in the story of Tobias, and what happens with Miss Garnet's new found friends in Venice. The descriptions of the city are well done, and Julia's adventures thoroughly engaging. An enlightning book that makes you ponder on yourself and
you behaviour to other people, and asks you to question the values you always hold as true, showing that a new environment can create an awakening of the soul. Subtly handled, with a great deal of attention to detail.