‘Art is despair with dignity’

Rough Music

Rough Music

Patrick Gale

A gripping and unnerving story of a family’s secrets and lies, from the bestselling author of ‘Notes from an Exhibition’ and ‘A Perfectly Good Man’.

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.

Reviews of Rough Music

    • ‘Like the sea he describes so well, Patrick Gale’s clear, unforced prose sucks one in effortlessly … he is excellent at the telling detail and description’ Elizabeth Buchan, Daily Mail
    • ‘There are no false notes in this book’ Marie Claire
    • ‘An astute, sensitive and at times tragically uncomfortable meditation on sex, lies and family…. a fabulously unnerving book… a hugely compelling writer’ Independent on Sunday
    • ‘It would be churlish to divulge more of the plot, suffice to say that it is as ingenious in design as it is generous in spirit’ Sunday Express

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