The pivotal characters are twins brought up in rural Canada during the 1930s. One of them is dispatched to Germany to study music and gets caught up with the Hitler Youth movement. The other, quieter one leads a voyeuristic existence, trying to make sense of the lives of his parents and their friends. There is a lot to make sense of. His father believes in a weird science known as Personal Magnetism and takes a clairvoyant for his mistress. His mother is haunted by the spectre of an earlier love affair and an abandoned child. And what about Fika, the young Russian woman who, in a parallel narrative, is busy trying to ski across the ice-cap to Canada in 1960? … 'Visible Worlds' blossoms into a real page-turner. Those willing to follow where Bowering leads will find themselves enthralled … Some of the descriptive passages, particularly of the frozen Arctic wastes, are spell-bindingly good.

Even better is the warmth of feeling Bowering brings to the characterization. We care about these people, on their strange pilgrimages of discovery.SUNDAY TELEGRAPH The characters are thousands of miles apart and there are points when we desperately want the two narratives to rub up close. But Bowering keeps us hanging on like icicles unti the dark and wonderful end.THE TIMES Bowering floats across the surface of time as gracefully as Fika glides along the ice; she writes lyrically but unobtrusively, letting the longings and hopes of her characters emerge of their own accord. When time runs out for one of them, you are surprised to find how much you care.GUARDIAN.