Book description
When Lara was twelve, and her younger brother Alfie eight, their
father died in a helicopter crash. A prominent plastic surgeon, and
Irishman, he had honed his skills on the bomb victims of the
Troubles. But the family grew up used to him being absent: he only
came to London for two weekends a month to work at the Harley Street
Clinic, where he met their mother years before, and they only once
went on a family holiday together, to Spain, where their mother
cried and their father lost his temper and left early.
Because home, for their father, wasn't Earls Court: it was
Belfast, where he led his other life...
Narrated by Lara, nearing forty and nursing her dying mother,
All the Beggars Riding is the heartbreaking portrait of a
woman confronting her past just as she realises that time is running out
Lucy Caldwell was born in Belfast in 1981. She read English at
Queens' College, Cambridge, and is a graduate of Goldsmith's MA in
Creative and Life Writing. Her debut novel Where They Were
Missed (2006), was described in the Independent as
'beautifully paced, evocative and unfaltering . . . an object lesson
in balancing the personal and the political'. An award-winning
playwright, she is currently under commission to write for the main
stage of the Royal Court Theatre. Her most recent novel, The meeting
Point won the Dylan Thomas Prize 2011.
