Excerpt
Down by the river, the trees are beginning to flame with colour and the wind tears the leaves from the birches by the monastery, scattering them over the grass like a far-flung handful of coins. In the early mornings, the hedges glitter with diamonds of dew caught in the gossamer nets of spiders' webs. Children pick blackberries and collect rose hips and hawthorn berries and shiny, burnished conkers. Great flocks of starlings gather in the branches and take to the sky to wheel in black formation. Geese fly over, calling to us mournfully of winter.