'Grenville makes awkward atmospheres and fumbling encounters wonderfully vivid. Read it and cringe' The Times The Idea of Perfection is a funny and touching romance between two people who've given up on love. Set in the eccentric little backwater of Karaka rook, New South Wales, pop. 1374, it tells the story of Douglas Cheeseman, a gawky engineer with jug-handle ears, and Harley Savage, a woman altogether too big and too abrupt for comfort.

Harley is in Karaka rook to foster 'Heritage', and Douglas is there to pull down the quaint old Bent Bridge. From day one, they're on a Collison course. But out of this unpromising conjunction of opposites, something unexpected happens: sometimes even better than perfection.

'From these two reticent characters, besieged by two lifetimes of regret, doubt and dismay, Grenville manufactures an extraordinary comedy of manners, made all more powerful by her own reticence as a writer' Guardian 'Outrageously entertaining' Daily Mail 'Mined throughout with little pockets of danger and depth' Guardian 'A truly amazing writer' Rosie Boycott, chair of the Orange Prize jury