The magical healing power of a masked costume ball hangs in the balance in this whimsical tale of transformationDespite the many and various festivals on offer across the modern world, it occurs to Viv, the principal actor in Ben Okri’s first new work of fiction since 2019’s The Freedom Artist, that there is a significant demand yet to be satisfied: a gathering to meet the needs of those “smashed up by love”.If anyone is up to the task of staging such an event, with all its potential for chaos and hysterics, it is Viv, to whom the idea arrives on the 20th anniversary of her own “smash-up”. A member of the House of Lords, with half her life dedicated to good works, Viv is a mistress of organisation. And when she recruits her best friend Beatrice, retired “juggler of portfolios” with a seat on the board of numberless charities, they’re off. The women’s husbands, both clubbable pillars of society – Stephen, magazine editor, is married to Beatrice; Alan, financier and self-made man, to Viv – are wary, not to say sceptical. “It sounds like a candidate for the most morose evening of the year,” opines Alan in his velvet dressing gown, glass of whisky at his elbow. Yet whether it is through Beatrice’s suggestion that they appeal to the husbands’ self-interest and the potential for monetisation, or by a mysterious change in the air, the men fall into line. The deal is sealed when Viv encounters “world-renowned clairvoyant” Madame Sosostris at an event in the Lords. Not only does she immediately read Viv’s mind, she decides that the festival should be a masked costume ball, offers herself as the biggest draw and even proposes a venue: a chateau in an enchanted wood in the south of France. She also mentions, by the by, that Viv’s “fate is alread