Bird Inside

Jane's whole world is overturned at her eighteenth birthday party. She flees from home, disorientated, and finds refuge with Christopher, a stained-glass artist more than forty years her senior who is working on a Resurrection window. As the window takes shape, Jane tries to rebuild her own life, examining the beliefs of all those she meets -- chaotic cosy Isobel, whose motherly exterior conceals a girlhood tragedy; wealthy, tormented Adrian, who uses his private chapel as a leisure-centre and sees God as Chairman of the Board; Hadley, who believes in melting down stained class to make soup for London's tramps; Christopher himself, selfish and charismatic, the promiscuous philosopher whose art is his religion, and who regards sex as a 'taste of the immortal'. To escape her own confusion, Jane travels to Chartres, where, surrounded by the glory of thirteenth-centry glass, she has an extraordinary experience which leads on to her 'rebirth' back at home, and to another, longer...