Being adored was something she had come to mistrust. She felt adoration to be a small and lovely-looking bomb that could blow up in your face at any time.

In the small and eccentric town of Karakarook, New South Wales, two outsiders meet for the first time. Douglas Cheeseman is an engineer, gawky, awkward and lonely, and Harley Savage, a woman altogether too big and abrupt for comfort. Harley is in town to work with the local Heritage Museum, and Douglas is there to tear down the town's beloved old Bent Bridge, so from day one they are on a collision course; but out of this unpromising union comes something unexpected, something even better than perfection.

Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2001, Kate Grenville's The Idea of Perfection is witty, tender, and wildly entertaining. Both a comedy of manners and a deeply moving portrait of two people who have given up on love, this is an unmissable classic.

'An honest and compelling celebration of imperfection' Observer

'Outrageously entertaining' Daily Mail