Beautifully written and deeply compassionate, Rough Music is a novel of one family at two defining points in time. Seamlessly alternating between the present day and a summer thirty years past, its twin stories unfold at a cottage along the eastern coast of England.Will Pagett receives an unexpected gift on his fortieth birthday, two weeks at a perfect beach house in Cornwall. Seeking some distance from the married man with whom he's having an affair, he invites his aging mother and father to share his holiday, knowing the sun and sea will be a welcome change for. But the cottage and the stretch of sand before it seem somehow familiar and memories of a summer long ago begin to surface. Thirty-two years earlier. A young married couple and their eight year-old son begin two idyllic weeks at a beach house in Cornwall. But the sudden arrival of unknown American relatives has devastating consequences, turning what was to be a moment of reconciliation into an act of betrayal that will cast a lengthy shadow.As Patrick Gale masterfully unspools these parallel stories, we see their subtle and surprising reflections in each other and discover how the forgotten dramas of childhood are reenacted throughout our lives.Deftly navigating the terrain between humor and tragedy, Patrick Gale has written an unforgettable novel about the lies that adults tell and the small acts of treason that children can commit. Rough Music gracefully illuminates the merciful tricks of memory and the courage with which we continue to assert our belief in love and happiness.From the Hardcover edition.

Rough Music

Literature & Fiction

patrick-gale

Contemporary

Flamingo

A moving and intensely felt examination of the steps to which we will go to seek protection and security in others. Returning to haunted Cornish landscapes familiar from other Gale novels, it is the story of individuals in search of a family. Dido, the nine-year-old heroine and emotional centre of Patrick Gale's latest painful comedy, knows that the adults who surround her, the adults who should know better, depend on her for happiness. So who is she to turn to when her short life turns upside down and tragic family history threatens to repeat itself. Eliza, the clever, depressive aunt who has brought Dido up, and whose brilliant academic career has foundered due to the demands of unlooked-for motherhood, tries and fails to give Dido the happy normal childhood she never had herself. Her ex-husband Giles needs Dido back in his life, feeling it has lost all meaning, all substance, without her. Then there is Pearce, the new love interest in Eliza'a life, desperate to give Eliza and Dido the security and protection they need. But will Eliza let him? Does she love him or is she using him to restart a stalled career? Only Dido, unheard of in the clamour of others' needs, has the power to make or break the happiness of these children in adult clothing.

A Sweet Obscurity

Harper-perennial

Friendly Fire

A subtle and entertaining tragicomic love story. Julian as a small boy is taken on the perfect Cornish holiday. When glamorous American cousins unexpectedly swell 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, though his parents are neither as normal nor as happy as he supposes, Julian's world view is the sunnily 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 he is happy and always has been.

Notes From An Exhibition

<p>From the author of A Perfectly Good Man, the bestselling story of an artist tormented by depression and the toll of creativity. When troubled artist Rachel Kelly dies she leaves behind an extraordinary body of work - but for her family there is a legacy of secrets and painful revelations. Rachel exerts a power that outlives her. To her children she is both curse and blessing, as they cope with the inheritance of her passions - and demons. Only their father's gift of stillness can withstand Rachel's destructive influence and the suspicion that they all came a poor second to her art. Piecing together the clues of her life - as artist, lover, mother, wife and patient - takes the reader from Cornwall to Canada across a span of forty years. What emerges is a tender story of enduring love, and a portrait of a family coping with the sometimes too dazzling brilliance of a genius.</p>

Notes from an Exhibition

Fourth Estate

<p>When forty-something Laura Lewis is obliged to abandon a life of stylish independence in Paris to care for her elderly mother it seems all romantic opportunities have gone up in smoke. Then she runs into Ben, the great love of her student days - and, as she only now dares admit, the emotional touchstone against which she has judged every man since. Are they brave enough to take a second chance at the lasting happiness fate has offered them? This recording is unabridged. Typically abridged audiobooks are not more than 60 per cent of the author's work and as low as 30 per cent with characters and plotlines removed.</p>

The Whole Day Through

4th Estate

Gentleman's Relish

UK General Books

The new novel from Patrick Gale, author of Richard & Judy-bestseller `Notes from an Exhibition', returning readers to his beloved Cornish coastline. "Do you need me to pray for you now for a specific reason?""I'm going to die.""We're all going to die. Does dying frighten you?""I mean I'm going to kill myself." When 20-year-old Lenny Barnes, paralysed in a rugby accident, commits suicide in the presence of Barnaby Johnson, the much-loved priest of a West Cornwall parish, the tragedy's reverberations open up the fault-lines between Barnaby and his nearest and dearest. The personal stories of his wife, children and lover illuminate Barnaby's ostensibly happy life, and the gulfs of unspoken sadness that separate them all. Across this web of relations scuttles Barnaby's repellent nemesis - a man as wicked as his prey is virtuous. Returning us to the rugged Cornish landscape of Notes from an Exhibition, Patrick Gale lays bare the lives and the thoughts of a whole community and asks us: what does it mean to be good?

A Perfectly Good Man

HarperCollins, Publishers

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Books by patrick-gale

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by patrick-gale. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Rough Music

A Sweet Obscurity

A Sweet Obscurity

Friendly Fire

Rough Music

Notes from an Exhibition

The Whole Day Through

Gentleman's Relish

Gentleman's Relish

A Perfectly Good Man