Publisher's Synopsis
Flora is visiting her parents in Mexico when the beloved family dog leaps up and bites her hand. She winds up in hospital where she undergoes a series of surgeries hand under anaesthetic and meets Wilhelmina, an elderly German woman with pneumonia, who collects pre-cinema toys. The two of them embark on a series of dream-like conversations in the hospital corridors where Wilhelmina puts on a magic lantern show for Flora, leaving her spellbound. Wilhelmina dies unexpectedly that very night but her son, Max, reaches out to Flora, asking her to bring his mother's ashes and the magic lantern back to London. As Flora returns to her job polishing silver at a jewellery shop, and starts visiting Max to learn more about his mother, she finds herself potentially transformed. Shadow of the Object is a magnificent work of shadow-play and a meditation on desire, metamorphosis and life and death.
