Quirky, poignant Verity

Something Beginning With by Sarah Salway (Bloomsbury, £10.99)

Verity Bell has a mane of witchy black hair, a disconcerting stare and an idiosyncratic view of the world. Brought up in the Fens, she has learnt to find beauty in the most unlikely places.
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'Not many people appreciate that if you lie in a field of broad bean plants in flower, just as the sun is going down, you will find yourself surrounded by the smell of Chanel No 5.'

She is smitten by children with webbed feet, a square of red velvet curtain that she snipped from her friend Sally's house and John, a married man she met through work - 'I think it was his kindness I fell in love with first.'

In alphabetical entries, Verity muses on such subjects as ants, glitter, illness, stalking and Woolworth's, revealing more of her character with each instalment.

She is a curious combination of winsome naivete and off-putting aloofness, and the author makes good use of these contrasting qualities as her affair with John progresses.

Something Beginning With is quirky and funny, but also surprisingly poignant, as Verity comes to the melancholy conclusion that love is 'just a state of mind, a fantasy, that you can learn to live without if necessary'.