Love and Eskimo Snow

Our dictionaries tell us that love, the infamous noun, can be defined precisely as ''a strong feeling of affection''. But that''s not Missy''s experience of love. For her, affection and passion play second fiddle to commitment and pledges. It''s not Elizabeth''s sense of the word, either; she''s got it pegged as intimacy and confidences.

Then there''s Claire, for whom love is bed, and Bea, who has spent a lifetime pondering the true meaning of love – right up until the fateful October morning on which this story starts. But is it ever possible to pick genuine, ''true'' love out in an identity parade? Or is love more like the Sami Eskimo concept of snow: summed up only in two hundred different words, and never falling the same way twice?

Sarah Holt''s debut novel is chick-lit with a twist, romantic fiction taken to its post-modern conclusion: ingenious, imaginative, surprisingly informative, and above all, a terrific read.

Sarah Holt was born in Wythenshawe, 1984, and grew up in Manchester. A former journalist for the Lincolnshire Echo, she now lives in Hertfordshire, concentrating on fiction and travel writing – the latter has taken her to more than thirty countries, and led to articles published in The Observer and the Guardian.

Our dictionaries tell us that love, the infamous noun, can be defined precisely as ''a strong feeling of affection''. But that''s not Missy''s experience of love. For her, affection and passion play second fiddle to commitment and pledges. It''s not Elizabeth''s sense of the word, either; she''s got it pegged as intimacy and confidences.

Then there''s Claire, for whom love is bed, and Bea, who has spent a lifetime pondering the true meaning of love – right up until the fateful October morning on which this story starts. But is it ever possible to pick genuine, ''true'' love out in an identity parade? Or is love more like the Sami Eskimo concept of snow: summed up only in two hundred different words, and never falling the same way twice?

Sarah Holt''s debut novel is chick-lit with a twist, romantic fiction taken to its post-modern conclusion: ingenious, imaginative, surprisingly informative, and above all, a terrific read.

Sarah Holt was born in Wythenshawe, 1984, and grew up in Manchester. A former journalist for the Lincolnshire Echo, she now lives in Hertfordshire, concentrating on fiction and travel writing – the latter has taken her to more than thirty countries, and led to articles published in The Observer and the Guardian.