Everyone in the picturesque hill town of Ooty in southern India wants something from Hilary Byrd, the newly arrived Englishman. Mr. Byrd has come to India to recover from severe depression caused by the loss of his job as a librarian in an unrecognizably noisy modern library. The Padre, who meets him on the train south, offers temporary lodging in a cottage on the church grounds. His hope is that Mr. Byrd will provide English lessons to Priscilla, his housekeeper and ward, the better to find her a husband. Although Priscilla has a secret boyfriend, she, too, wants to improve her English to better understand the lyrics of her beloved American country music. Jamshed, the auto rickshaw driver, sees Mr. Byrd as a means to a steady income. Ooly, the besotted dog, just wants his affection. VERDICT Part mystery, part romance, this charming story is set in the present but has the feel of an earlier time. Fans of Helen Simonson's Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and Rachel Joyce's The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry will eat this spicy masala of a novel right up.--Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

A remote Indian hill town inescapably shaped by its colonial past becomes a refuge for a self-doubting Englishman seeking peace and finding unsuspected engagement. Lightly yet deftly crafted, hovering in tone somewhere between comedy, tragedy, and fable, Welsh author Davies' understated second novel considers isolated characters and their yearnings against the historical long view and looming political violence. Hilary Byrd has fled English suburbia to reach this former British hill station in India, seeking an escape from modern clamor. A sexual blank slate, inclined to depression, Byrd is happy to be offered temporary shelter in a missionary's bungalow by the local Padre and settles into a gentle routine that includes the daily services of Jamshed, an auto rickshaw driver. The Padre's household includes Priscilla, a young woman who had been abandoned as a child. Byrd fears he's being groomed to take Priscilla on, but then, over time, as he teaches her English, sewing, and baking, he finds his feelings for her developing. But Priscilla loves another, Jamshed's nephew Ravi, a barber who wears a white Stetson and has ambitions to become a country and western singer. Davies' accumulation of curious, private, overlapping characters is presented tenderly in an India that seems, despite mention of internet cafes, scarcely to belong to the modern era. But nostalgia is intended to contrast with the seismic rumblings referenced in the Padre's mentions of "the beatings and the burnings, the lynchings and the riots." Davies is not an overtly political writer, but there will be a further pointing up of the advancing shift from imperialist past to nationalist future. The savage storm of fanaticism will eventually arrive in this sheltered corner, shattering hearts and expectations, before Davies' cast of hopefuls and misfits is released into an uncertain future. Davies subtly synthesizes complex issues into a low-key yet compelling web of affecting destinies. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Davies follows up West with a stunning, understated novel set in a former British hill station in contemporary Tamil Nadu, India. Hilary Byrd, a 51-year-old British former librarian who lost his job following a mental breakdown and rues the "tapping of keyboards and the singing of babies and the hysterical shouting of the drunk and the angry" that came to define the library where he worked, has come to India for a change of scenery. He ends up in the hill town, and upon meeting the Padre, a Christian Indian and the local clergyman, he's invited to stay in Canadian missionary's temporarily vacant bungalow. Byrd, alternately hopeful and despairing, is ferried around by Jamshed, an old rickshaw driver who listens patiently to Byrd's monologues about his own life's wrong turns and his enchantment with the town's "combination of the strange and familiar." Byrd falls in love with the Padre's young housekeeper, Priscilla, while Priscilla is captivated by Jamshed's nephew and his passion for American country music. However, while Byrd putters around obliviously, resentment toward Christians in India grows alongside Hindu nationalism, and the affable Padre and Priscilla find themselves threatened, a situation that involves Byrd in an unsettling denouement. Told from alternating perspectives, this captivating, nuanced tale balances a pervading sense of melancholy with pockets of wry humor. Davies's masterly elegy is not to be missed. Agent: Bill Clegg, the Clegg Agency. (Feb.)

Fiftysomething Hilary Byrd has always felt like a misfit, someone life frequently leaves behind. When even his steady work as a librarian in the small English town of Petts Wood becomes a burden, he has a nervous breakdown and quits. For a while Hilary leans on his sister, Wyn, but decides he needs to leave the stifling despair of home. He travels to India, but the crushing chaos only unsettles him further until he arrives at the Mission House in a small hillside town in the South. The temperate weather; a daily routine in which an old rickshaw driver, Jamshed, drives Hilary around town; and the grace of Padre, the clergyman all calm Hilary's nerves. When Padre asks Hilary teach Priscilla, a young woman in the church's care, English, the agnostic Englishman finds a satisfying new mission. Unfortunately, dark undercurrents of religious intolerance are gaining momentum and threaten to topple Hilary's carefully constructed house of cards. Davies (West, 2018) creates a world that is magical yet daubed with menace. Nuanced characters, lush descriptions of South India, and an incisive look at class and religion make for a rich and layered novel.