Godwin Baxter's ambition to create the perfect companion is given new hope when he finds the drowned body of the beautiful Bella Baxter. Having brought her back to life, he faces the jealousy of Bella’s husband, Dr Archibald McCandless. But what does Bella herself think?

A tale of true love and scientific daring, which whirls the reader from the private operating theatres of late-Victorian Glasgow through aristocratic casinos, low-life Alexandria and a Parisian bordello to an interrupted climax in a Scottish church. Winner of the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize.e small town she fled so many years ago.