Rough music

Description

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.

Description

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.

Subjects

Other Editions

• Rough musicBallantine Books2001-01-01
• Rough musicFourth Estate2009
• Rough MusiceBookRandom House Publishing Group2010-01-01