Shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award The 'English' of this novel are a particular kind
of family. Their ailing patriarch is Phillip Prys the once-famous writer unexpectedly eclipsed
first by voguish Salman Rushdie and second by a massive stroke. His third wife Shirin pads
through their house in Hampstead resolute in the face of Myfanwy first spouse who returns
with all the subtlety of a stormy weather front to manage Phillip's care. Their children Jake
and Celia have each retreated towards drugs and food their already strained relationship with
their father unable to bear this latest rupture. And to cap it all it's the hottest summer
anyone can remember. Enter Struan. Built like a heron fresh from Scotland he is thrust --
quite literally -- into the bosom of the family as Phillip's 17-year-old nurse. He's had
experience of death but not of London. It's a foreign country with foreign food and foreign
customs. But it also has a kind of magic. As he comes under the influence of each Prys his
life begins to change in ways he could never have imagined. And so in the meantime do theirs.
. .
