With our sense of the past and our sense of abroad. With France and England, life and art, sex and death, george sand and louise colet, aesthetics and redcurrant jam. And with its enigmatic narrator, a retired English do...With our sense of the past and our sense of abroad. With France and England, life and art, sex and death, george sand and louise colet, aesthetics and redcurrant jam. And with its enigmatic narrator, a retired English doctor, whose life and secrets are slo deals with flaubert, parrots, bears and railways.