INTO mirrors? We all are, bathroom, hall, the bedroom. So it's hard to imagine a world when the perfect reflection was a very rare privilege, and one enjoyed only by the seventeenth century Venetians.

It would have to be the Italians, wouldn't it? I learnt the story in The Mirror Makers by Clare Colvin (Hutchinson £15.99).

In seventeenth century Murano, the mirror-making secrets are held close, by families of craftsmen and by the ever-watchful Venetian Republic authorities.

But a handful of ambitious young Venetian men dream of greater things and are enticed by Louis XIV's all-powerful Minister, Colbert, to Paris to work their magic for his king and the French aristocracy.

But life in Paris for most of them isn't what they expected, they were worked hard and had little freedom, and they faced danger from the Venetian authorities, who saw them as traitors.

One of the mirror-makers, Andrea Allegri, makes influential friends and admirers within the court circle and it is his job to realise the king's gilded dreams of the palace at Versailles with its glittering Hall of Mirrors.

But the court is not a safe place to be, with its intrigues, romances and deceptions, all heated up and kept spinning by the whims and desires of the Sun King.

France's coffers, which had been enhanced by Colbert's prudent housekeeping, are being drained.

Colvin's novel becomes a whirl of passion and intrigue, set within the messy reality of massive building works, the creation of wonderful gardens, fantastic fountains, and the seeds of revolution. Not a skin deep story.

In The Romantic by Barbara Gowdy (Flamingo £15.99), Louise Kirk is ten when her mother disappears, leaving home without a word. Her father copes, neighbours are caring and helpful.

This sounds and is not unusual, similarly the Canadian locations, but the writing is good.

The less than realistic Louise resorts to her Angel of Love, an angel that doesn't seem to serve her very well as she launches herself into all-consuming passions.

The passion for the new neighbours' son, Abel, is set to last, but at the outset of the story we know he died on her 26th birthday, a tobacco and alcohol addict.

"Why couldn't I save him? And if I couldn't, why couldn't Bach or astronomy, why couldn't trees?"

Her times with Abel are revisited throughout the novel.

On, off, they meet, he moves away, she meets other people, they get together again, Louise waits for a telephone call from him - "The seconds tick by. They fall, drop by drop, the smithereens of my life."

"He loved me, he pitied me, I could see he did, but there was a wash of absence over him like nostalgia for a future he was already living in".