Polly Mackintosh isan editor and a translator from French. She has translated the work of AlainDucasse, Antoine Laurain, Serge Joncour and early French feminist Marie-LouiseGagneur. She currently lives in London.

'An elegant and quietly lyrical charting of a life changed by books' Irish Times

A tender and witty coming-of-age story about the power of literature to inspire new beginnings, peppered with a cast of quirky characters and a unique heroine.

Clara is a hairdresser at Cindy Coiffure, a sleepy French salon with an identity crisis. Her relationship is fizzling out. Her tanoholic boss Madame Habib worships Jacques Chirac and talks longingly of her days in Paris. And now Madame Lévy-Leroyer wants to go blonde. Clara can't help but wonder if there's more to life than this . . .

Everything changes when a customer leaves behind the first volume of In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. As Clara reads, she discovers a new world. And slowly but surely, she will work out who she wants to be.