A new(2016) edition with the bonus of an insightful afterword from John Banville.

The blurb tells you all you need to know as far as plot - "the youngest of the four sisters embarks on a reckless love affair, set against the backdrop of a crumbling 1930's Europe" - and there are no surprises along the way. The predictability, though, doesn't matter, I didn't read this to find out what happened next. Higgins constructs, or recreates, his atmospheric world and that is enough.

'Evening.Steam on the surface by the far bank. Cattle come to drink. House-flies. Dragon-flies. Carried down. Winding river. Its bends. Overhanging foliage. Ash. Elm. Beech. Ash. A cat on the river wall. Black cat. Washing itself. Complacent. River wall. Endless river. Tireless river.

Bats fly at night. Meadows full of white daisies and buttercups. Swallows darting over the hedge. The currant bushes in Springfield garden. Dry fumes of their musty branches. Otto favours blackcurrant jam.'

Banville tells us that Beckett declared it to be 'literary shit' but also told Higgins that 'in you, together with the beginner, is the old hand'.

'Ending, ending.

-That monotonous condition of the soul, Otto said, halfway between fulfilment and futility, which comes with living in the country.

Futility, futility.

- Among bats, Otto said, which have connection in the autumn, the sperms can remain dormant in the uterus throughout the whole of winter and impregnate the ova in the spring.

Ended.

Two springs, two summers, three autumns and two winters.

That was all; and now all over'