The One Who Whistles

The long-awaited concluding novel of the "Frederika Quartet," which is considered perhaps the main work of the dame of the Order of the British Empire, Antonia Susan Byatt. The tetralogy was written over a quarter of a century, and its plot also spans a quarter of a century, with the first two novels ("The Lady in the Garden," "The Living Thing") being published before the Booker Prize-winning international bestseller "Possession," while the third and fourth were published afterward.
So, Frederika Potter - a former Yorkshire schoolgirl and Cambridge graduate, a former wife of a Herefordshire squire, and now a single mother in the midst of psychedelic "swinging London" of the 1960s - continues to live among rebellious artists, writers, and poets. Teaching at an art school and engaging in literary criticism is no longer sufficient for her, and she becomes embroiled in a new adventure: she becomes the host of a popular science television program "Through the Looking Glass," with each episode disproving the old saying: "It is unseemly for a woman to whistle, just as it is for a hen to fly." Meanwhile, a comprehensive conference "Body and Mind" organized by the University of North Yorkshire threatens to turn into a student riot, and in the ancient estate of Dunvale Hall, a charismatic preacher calling himself Josh Agnice establishes a genuine Manichaean cult…