374 pages
English language
Published Nov. 6, 2009 by Fourth Estate.
374 pages
English language
Published Nov. 6, 2009 by Fourth Estate.
Julian, as a small boy, is taken on the perfect Cornish holiday. When glamorous American cousins unexpectedly sweel the party, however, emotions run high and events spiral out of control .Though he has been brought up in the forbidding shadow of the prison his father runs, and though his parents are neither as normal nor as happy as he supposes, Julian's world view is the summily selfish, accepting one of boyhood. It is only when he becomes a man -- seemingly at ease with love, with his sexuality, with his ghosts - that the traumatic effects of that distant summer rise up to challenge his defiant assertion that his is happy and always has been.