Fiona Maye, a High Court judge in London, has built an impressive career on the bench, but a controversial case involving an adolescent Jehovah's Witness—on top of her husband's yearning for an open marriage—shakes all her convictions in this tightly coiled novel. Acclaimed for such sumptuous canvases as Atonement and Saturday, McEwan here crafts a taut morality tale in crystalline sentences.
— Hamilton Cain
