Jem is a joyful mystery to Alice. She is something to give thanks for. And when she disappears from Alice's life, as suddenly as she entered it, a whirl of glamour, subversion and literary references, Alice is left bereft. But then she meets Giovanni, presumptuous and hectoring, passionate and beautiful, who leads her back to her childhood friend and the mystery and chaos still surrounding her. Alice finds herself being seduced all over again...

A work written with an authority and ease . . . .The novel pits the valuable bonds among women against the antagonism of the opposite sex. Temples of Delight celebrates imagination in fiction and in life.

As tricky as a master composer, Trapido has taken us on a spiritual journey right through the dark forest of lost friendships and broken hearts, out into the sunshine of renewal.

Like Trapido's celebrated first novel, Brother of the More Famous Jack, it is quirky, wise, and warm, full of charm and entirely original. More than a play on the Mozart opera, Temples of Delight is a sly comment on contrivance and serendipity, loss and gain. Wry and generous, it has a delightfully eccentric vision and . . . is blessed with a delicious sense of the absurd.

'Steel yourself for a baroque romance of untimely deaths, orphan babes, stolen novels, canny nuns and dark, forceful lovers'