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The moving new novel from the bestselling and critically acclaimed young author of Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain

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´One of our most exciting young writers´ - The Times

´Wasn´t the life of any person made up out of the telling of two tales, after all? People lived in the space between the realities of their lives and the hopes they had for them. Everyone needed their stories, the other side of the ribbon of their lives, the real life and the dream, the statement and the meaning, all of them a tape´s breadth apart from each other, impossibly divided, indivisibly close.´

Every year, Robert´s family come together at a rambling old house to celebrate his birthday. Aunts, uncles, distant cousins - it has been a milestone in their lives for decades. But this year Robert doesn´t want to be reminded of what has happened since they last met - and neither, for quite different reasons, does his granddaughter Kate. Neither of them is sure they can face the party. But for both Robert and Kate, it may become the most important gathering of all.

As lyrical and true to life as Norris´s critically acclaimed and bestselling debut Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain, which won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and Debut of the Year at the British Book Awards, this is a compelling, emotional story of family, human frailty, and the marks that love leaves on us.

´Norris writes beautifully, unearthing extraordinary depths in the everyday... a memorable writer, mature beyond his years.´ -Sunday Times
´Norris has a gift for tapping in to ordinary lives and finding the extraordinary in them´ - Daily Mail

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"Courageous . . . memorable . . . so moving that one wonders why as a society we are so much more eager to hear about young love than old . . . it is incidental moments that remain vivid in memory once the book is closed, small glimpses of unsuspected inner lives." Guardian

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Barney Norris was born in Sussex in 1987, and grew up in Salisbury. Upon leaving university he founded the theatre company Up In Arms. He won the Critics´ Circle and Offwestend Awards for Most Promising Playwright for his debut full-length play Visitors. He is the Martin Esslin Playwright in Residence at Keble College, Oxford.

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