Now in his late fifties, Jeremy Eldritch is living in Paris, writing soft porn under a pseudonym and trying to find happiness as a gay man. Things could be better, but he's doing OK, until a phone call from his all-but-estranged sister Rachel informs him that their father is on his deathbed and a visit home is long overdue.
After he has travelled back to the family home in south-eastern England, Jeremy and Rachel revisit everything that has gone on in their lives through three different timelines. The prose frequently shifts between the narrators, as we plod through the very messy times that they've been through, including their mother's death in a Greek hospital some thirty years earlier and, ten years before that, the lead up to Jeremy's departure from the family home.
Rachel, once married but now divorced, is very old-school and finds it hard to accept that her brother is homosexual. She frequently annoyed me, because she seems to be very bitter and twisted, but maybe she was just annoyed with her brother for escaping the family woes by moving abroad. The presence in the house of their father's long-term Chinese bit-on-the-side, and her grown up son who is now a doctor, add further tensions to deal with, but ultimately, everyone realises that some things are better left unspoken.
It's an interesting look at life, death and love, in all shapes and forms.
for more information and an extract : https://www.book2look.com/book/QdTPWcdQNT
star rating : 4/5
RRP : £8.99
- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Aardvark Bureau (23 Aug. 2018)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1910709492
- ISBN-13: 978-1910709498
- Product Dimensions: 12.7 x 17.8 cm
Disclosure : I received a reading copy of the book.
Sounds an interesting read, I'll see if my local library can get it for me
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