A self-absorbed young musician comes as a pupil-boarder to the house of an 'old European' family. Gradually his life is taken over and consumed, seemingly, by dark, mysterious forces within as much as outside himself. Milk and Honey is a strangely haunting novel. While much of what we have come to expect and admire in Elizabeth Jolley's work is powerfully present - vivid and diverse characters, pathos, humour and acute perceptions of people and their situations - it is in many ways quite unlike anything she has previously written. A work of gothic proportions, Milk and Honeyis an astonishing tapestry of character and incident that surprises and yet never fails to convince.