This is a book about the shape of a life, from beginning to end. It's about art, critics, and ageing. It's about the surrounding world - sky, trees, lakes, stars - and 'the world beyond this world', which can be glimpsed in rare moments when something shattering occurs. It's a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and its shape-shifting, mystical form allows us to take in the whole world in one glance. Heartbreaking, exciting, profound: a short epic that reimagines what the novel can do.