The Crocus Hour

In the early 1980s an unnamed narrator, brought up in France by English-speaking parents, meets Henry on Crete. Henry's daughter Sally has disappeared there while on holiday with her friend Jane, who has nothing to tell and scorns their search. The narrator spends long hours retracing Sally's steps with Henry and hearing him hold forth on Greek history, and later follows him back to his house and garden in the wilds of New Zealand's South Island, where questions hang over the death of Henry's wife and the herbalist who treated her. Henry and Jane later tell parts of the story themselves, the book's last stretch takes in suburban Dunedin in the 1960s, and Henry has to consider that Sally may have chosen to escape a too-watchful father.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

304 pages in the original

Genres

Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

Greece, New Zealand, 1960s–1980s

First published

2008 by Penguin Books

ISBN

9780143008927 (Penguin Books, New Zealand)