Set partly in London and partly in South Carolina, Girl From the South follows the fortunes of a small group of the young and the single — the children, in fact, of sixties swingers. They have, it seems, infinite opportunity, but are bedeviled by indecision, by the breadth of choice, by the inflexibility of tradition — and by the consequences of their parents' careless marital history.

Our narrator stays on a Mediterranean island much longer than he intended to for a number of reasons. One reason is to prove his mother and his girlfriend wrong, who both say that to decamp to an island for a whole winter to write a novel is melodramatic and rather a cliché. Most nights, to abate loneliness and pass the time, he talks to the locals. One night, as the newly-elected Mayor passes by, they are reminded of how different things used