Tracy Chevalier’s The Virgin Blue has been selected for the WH Smith Fresh Talent promotion, which is such an achievement for a serious female writer that you feel it deserves an award. Her novel is about a young American woman who goes to live in a French village and researches her Huguenot ancestors – and a Mediterranean man.
   This is a good read: no clichés in sight, a well-made story with characters who walk and talk just the way people do, halfway between hallucination and public façade.