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Bernice Rubens was the first woman to win the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1970 with this, her fifth novel. The Zweck family are a disturbing bunch, and none more so than Norman, whose brilliant career as a barrister has been curtailed by a depressive illness and an addiction to tranquillisers. His father Rabbi Zweck is at a loss to help him, and his unmarried sister Bella tries hard to help him when she's not working behind the till in the grocery shop below their flat. Norman is the clever one of this close-knit Jewish family in the East End of London. Infant prodigy, brilliant barrister, the apple of his parents' eyes, until at 41 he becomes a drug addict, confined to his bedroom, at the mercy of his hallucinations and paranoia. For Norman his committal to a mental hospital represents the ultimate act of betrayal. For his rabbi father, his son's deterioration is a bitter reminder of his own guilt and failure. Only Bella, the unmarried sister, still in her childhood white ankle socks, can reach across the abyss of pain to bring father and son the elusive peace which they both desperately crave. The novel has the Yiddish-based rhythms of the Zwecks's way of speaking. 218pp, paperback facsimile reprint of the 1969 original.