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Overview
An Oprah Book Club Choice. A dark comedy hailed by reviewers as 'extremely funny' with 'a clever plot and plenty of surprises.'
Meet Ken. He's obsessed with death, planning his own funeral and desperate to die in the bosom of his family. Unfortunately for Ken, that's the last place his family wants him. His oldest son Nick left home over twenty years ago and reinvented himself. At forty, he has returned home to the countryside of Kent in England, and found happiness with his girlfriend Astrid and her twelve-year-old daughter Laura, and he doesn't want the old man to spoil things. He's come a long way; he's a professional, a country gent, a family man. But the past is coming back for Nick and it won't let him be.
'Louise Dean's fearless, frank and darkly comic novels have brought a fresh colour and character to English fiction.' Boyd Tonkin, The Independent.
'Dark, scurrilous and richly comic. There is so much to treasure in this terrific book, but its deepest joy is the sharp, perceptive writing.' Financial Times
'Very appealing...so vivid are the quintessentially British characters and the snappy, well-observed dialogue. Delightful, eccentric...' The Observer
'Dean's observations have a lyrical intensity few can match.' The Guardian
'A warm-hearted comedy of bad manners.' Daily Mail
'Like its predecessors, it channels the rough music of everyday life for non-Bloomsbury folk with a tragicomic subtlety, a pin-sharp ear for dialogue and a flair for every nuance of character and class. Beneath the mordant delights of observation lies a sharp awareness of the grander themes - love, selfhood, family, freedom and above all death - that haunt minds and shape lives in Kentish cottages, and executive-style new-build homes, as much as Kentish castles. Admirers of Beryl Bainbridge still grieving her loss should find solace here.' Boyd Tonkin, The Independent
'Dean writes with beautifully controlled clarity about family ties, social class, the generation gap and the vanished England of the past. She's extremely funny, but also humane and moving.' The Times
'Dean is able to demonstrate her unobtrusive skill as the creator of comic set-pieces.. .painfully funny. A clever plot and plenty of surprises.' The Sunday Times
Louise Dean is founder and course director at the worldwide writing school for novelists The Novelry.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781393883043 |
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Publisher: | Pomeranian Books |
Publication date: | 09/25/2019 |
Pages: | 334 |
Sales rank: | 872,303 |
Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.70(d) |
Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Louise Dean is the author of three previous novels: Becoming Strangers, which was awarded the Betty Trask Prize in 2004 and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Guardian First Book Award, This Human Season and The Idea of Love. She lives in Kent, England with her three children.
What People are Saying About This
“A highly entertaining, vivid evocation of love and marriage… Dean’s characters have the rough edges and surprising grace of real people, and her fierce humanism animates every page.” –The New York Times Book Review
“Remarkably astute… Dean has perfect pitch [and] she sneaks in just enough grace to give her characters a chance to prove Thomas Wolfe wrong: As long as you don’t expect anyone to get out the good china, you can go home again.” –The Washington Post
“Glorious hell breaks loose in the devilish, dauntingly talented hands of this award-winning writer.” –Elle
“Razor-sharp.” –Entertainment Weekly
“Brilliant… [Dean’s] insights are dazzling… Characters rake themselves through self-revelations, and the prose leaps with a fervor for the present moment.” –Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Vividly imagined and surprisingly funny… Call it sentimental if you like, but it’s also sweet and genuine and universally true.” –Associated Press
Reading Group Guide
INTRODUCTION
A long-estranged family discovers that blood is thicker than water in this domestic comedy.
It's been a couple of decades since Nick cast off his impossible, contentious, embarrassingly working-class parents: gruff, stingy, explosive Ken and Pearl, who seemed to revert to a primal state of nature after a divorce that both of them managed to blame on Nick. Enjoying the life of the country gentleman that he's made for himself with impeccably turned-out Astrid and her teenage daughter, Laura, Nick has kept only the slenderest family connection to his brother, Dave, who's stuck with the role of ambassador in a family that's long settled into cold war. But then Nick's father decides that the year of his death has arrived, kicking off an ill-conceived quest to reunite his family…
ABOUT LOUISE DEAN
Louise Dean is the author of three previous novels: Becoming Strangers, which was awarded the Betty Trask Prize in 2004 and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Guardian First Book Award, This Human Season, and The Idea of Love. She lives in Kent, England with her three children.
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