The Virgin in the Garden and Still Life precede Babel Tower in both time of writing and time of story. The Virgin in the Garden is about Frederica at the age of seventeen, her sister Stephanie's courtship and marriage with Daniel, her brother Marcus's troubled relationship with one of his teachers, and Alexander Wedderburn's play about Queen Elizabeth I. The novel ends with Frederica losing her virginity. Still Life picks up shortly after The Virgin in the Garden and describes Frederica's years at Cambridge, Alexander's work on a play about Vincent van Gogh, and Stephanie and Daniel's life up until her accidental death. The novels are stylistically quite different from Babel Tower, telling less complicated stories and using fewer different technical devices, but the characters and places provide a continuity among the three novels. A fourth related tide, The Virgin in the Tower (1998), has a brief...