Rose Tremain is the author of two short novels, both remarkable exercises in imaginative identification with aging characters, the mystery of whose lives appears to elude them, until, at the end, they mark a quiet triumph for some fundamentally human capacity for both acceptance and transformation. She is also an accomplished writer of radio drama who recently has begun work for television. A third novel, The Cupboard , is scheduled for publication in 1982.

Rose Tremain was born in 1943 to Keith Nicholas Thompson, a writer, and his wife, Viola. She received a diploma in literature in 1962 from the Sorbonne and graduated with a B.A. in English Studies at the University of East Anglia in 1967, where she met and took classes with novelist Angus Wilson. After working for two years as an elementary school teacher and for two years as an editor at British Printing Corporation Publications, she began writing...