Sometimes you read a book and the affect it has on you is one
of sheer astonishment...astonishment that the written word can be so powerful,
so all consuming. David Park is one of the few authors who has the ability to
retain my 100 percent attention and to transport me to a time and location that
is profoundly sad but yet so lyrical. Tom is on a journey from Belfast to
Sunderland to collect his unwell son Luke, and return him home to the family
nest for Christmas. The weather is bad, airports are closed, and the journey involves
Tom treacherously navigating a frozen landscape. In this desolate setting there
is much time to reflect on family life, decisions taken, regrets examined and a
haunted memory..."Something brushes a branch further up the slope and snow
falls almost in slow motion. I know its Daniel even though I can't see
him"....... It soon becomes clear that tragedy has befallen a family
member and in the passing of those lonely snowbound hours the full extent and
heart break of Daniel's story is laid bare.
What follows is a brilliant wretched story, that demands the reader's
attention and sympathy, a sadness and situation that a family must accept and
are powerless to change the inevitable ending. Let the words of David Park
overwhelm you with their sparse and translucent prose...."The city looks
like one of its sleeping homeless, huddled against the cold and layered in
borrowed clothes"....."so I have to think things out on this journey
but I don't know if the monochrome world I'm travelling through makes it easier
or harder"....."life now ebbs and flows only as an inescapable welter
of thought and image."....."Strange to be nursed by your child but I
guess that reversal of roles is one that probably awaits us all down the
road."....
A truly wonderful novel by an exceptional author, many thanks
to the good people at netgalley and publisher Bloomsbury for a gratis copy in
exchange for an honest review and that is what I have written.
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