Longlisted for the 2004 Women's Prize for Fiction
You can’t keep a good man down… even when he’s dead!
When an American mother and ex-journalist is overwhelmed by her new Swiss home, a visitor pops out of nowhere offering to relieve her son’s asthma, her husband’s distracted absence and her problems grappling with village life. Is he the village crackpot or – as he claims – the Greatest Mind of the Eighteenth Century? This talkative character in kneebreeches and a powdered wig is the last straw. Though she begs him to disappear, he unpacks his moldy trunk and a lifetime of stories instead. Slowly “V.” becomes her stalwart best friend as they laugh, bicker and he teaches her the best lesson of all: how to live life to its fullest.
