In a red brick mansion block off the Marylebone Road, Vivien, a sensitive, bookish girl grows up sealed off from both past and present by her timid refugee parents Then one morning a glamorous uncle appears, dressed in a mohair suit, with a diamond watch on his wrist and a girl in a leopard-skin hat on his arm Why is Uncle Sandor so violently unwelcome in her parents' home? Set against the backdrop of a London from the 1950s to the present day, this is a novel about the clothes we choose to wear, the personalities we dress ourselves in, and about how they define us all