Like a Russian doll, this is a novel of interlocking stories, each one opening to reveal another. It tells not only the story of the loss of a child and its effect on three people, but an account of a young girl's life in a brothel during WWI, the magical story of a circus acrobat, and the history of Stalin's first wife and her mysterious fate. Mourning Ruby is Helen Dunmore's most ambitious novel to date, hugely moving and strongly plotted, about memory, history - personal and public - about imagination, and ultimately about the most important relationship of all in any novel - that of the reader to the writer.