Annie Freud's award-winning first collection, "The Best Man That Ever Was," introduced readers to a remarkably versatile new voice; "The Mirabelles" delivers a similarly exhilarating cornucopia--the Mask of Temporary Madness, Marc Almond, mini-novels a sonnet long, Carottes Vichy, and the most gripping account of a billiard game you'll ever read. However, in a new sequence derived from family letters, Freud has invented almost a new kind of writing: neither "found" nor "made" in the conventional sense, these poems are profoundly moving, and startling in their boldly unfashionable lack of irony. Elsewhere "The Mirabelles" is full of the world-stuff--the clothes and food, the art and social intrigues--with which we dress and conceal our deeper emotions and appetites. In the end, this is a book about reality and its representations, and the truth and lies we tell about ourselves.