Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father,
George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald
dress and a D-cup that he wasn't married. Bunty had never wanted to marry
George, but here she was, stuck in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient
street beneath York Minster, with sensible and sardonic Patrica aged five,
greedy cross-patch Gillian who refused to be ignored, and Ruby... Ruby
tells the story of The Family, from the day at the end of the nineteenth
century when a travelling French photographer catches frail beautiful Alice
and her children, like flowers in amber, to the startling, witty, and
memorable events of Ruby's own life.