Serena Mackesy is a unique talent, the type of writer that you don't stumble across everyday. She's a victim of bad cover art, however - don't let the horrible cover put you off this book. If you are a died-hard chick lit fan, this may not be the book for you. Or, it may! I love the silly stuff as much as the next woman, but I find Mackesy (in both The Temp and Virtue) delivers a deeper, darker tale. Virtue is the story of two women who have been dear friends and surrogate families for years. Anna and Harriet are different in many ways - Harriet is beautiful and aloof, frittering away her life making art out of popcorn and useless objects. Anna is not so beautiful, but makes up for it by sleeping with just about any warm male body. Oh, and they both work in a tawdry club where they dress up like school girls and "punish" the customers. The real driver of their story though is the relationships - or lack of - that they have with their mothers. Harriet's mother is somewhat of a Princess Diana figure (everyone has carefully stepped around that in the reviews, but there it is) who died in a spectacular fashion years before. She's now being bandied about as a potential saint and Harriet has some real issues with that. Anna's mother is a Nobel prize winning scientist/musician (yes - too good to be true) and is certainly nobody's saint. Throw in a handsome and noble policeman, a handsome (and noble in his own way) Australian school teacher on holiday, a tabloid columnist, and a few other dodgy characters and you've got quite a interesting crew. But reading along, you don't realize where Mackesy is taking you - and it get's fairly horrifying (in a good way, really!) Ultimately, you find yourself thinking about good and evil and what family - whether you're related or not - means. I truly loved this book and am saving it for (several) years, to pass along to my daughter when she's older. Mackesy writes some of the wittiest and intelligent dialog I've read and has a true gift for a plot twist. She shows the depth and talent with Virtue to break out of genre writing and go "mainstream" and I hope she does. Fabulous book - do yourself a favor and read it!
