A young woman, dreaming of love and yearning to know what love is, drives up to a Trappist monastery in rural Kentucky, seeking her older brother who has taken the vows of a novice. She spends seven days of unplanned contemplation interspersed between the seven prayers that punctuate the monastery’s daily routine. Insights and recollections come and go like the ebb and flow of the tide. In her silent enclosure she asks herself who she is, what she wants, and what she believes.

Anna Sun poses seemingly unanswerable questions, but like an illuminated book of hours this sensitive novella – beautifully adorned by photographs of Bee Flower’s magnificent bas-reliefs – seems to point to where an answer might lie.