When Jaime's behaviour becomes so unpredictable that she has to sleep with a gun under her pillow, she decides it's time to leave. About the author Lisa St Aubin de Teran was born in 1953. Her first novel, Keepers of the House, won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1982 and was followed by The Slow Train to Milan which won the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize in 1983. She currently lives in London and Italy. The Hacienda was published in 1997.
Venezuelan society seems to be very rigidly structured.
On page 143, when St Aubin de Teran is told to get the priest for Capino's burial, she writes, 'I was timid, shy and absurdly passive'. Jaime is an absence rather than a presence for the most part.