Apparently she did not realise, as her fellow diners had, that she ought to have been in Vogue, or Tatler, draped in mink, adorned with pearls; elbows on bony, jutting hips...

The unnamed narrator is followed from his days in rural Gloucestershire as an evacuee, where he first forms an attachment to Flora Barclay, the flighty, otherworldly daughter of his temporary foster parents. Back in London, caught up in the hollow glamour of his new, well-heeled schoolfriends, he tries desperately to find himself, and to find meaning.

Unrequited passion for a sullen and mysterious sculptor leads him to abroad, back to Flora, but a fairytale ending was never a possibility with a girl like that...

The Blue Grotto is a tale spun over a lifetime, touching upon childhood love and adolescent lust, and betrayal in the melee of heaving post-War London and the decades beyond. Not every romance is conventional; not every meaningful happiness is orthodox.