Book description
Portsmouth, 1984. Thirteen-year-old Jake's world is unravelling as
his father and older brother leave home, and his mother plunges into
alcoholic freefall.
Despite his turbulent home life, Jake is an irrepressible
teenager and his troubled mother is not the only thing on his mind:
there's the hi-fi he's saving up for, his growing passion for Greek
mythology (and his pretty classics teacher), and the anticipation of
brief visits to see his dad. When his parents reconcile, life finally
seems to be looking up. Their first family holiday, announced over
scampi and chips in the Royal Oak, promises to be the icing on the
cake -- until long-unspoken family secrets begin to surface.
Isabel Ashdown's debut novel tells a captivating story of family
life, at once troubling, funny and joyous. Vividly bringing to life
the gentility of a 1950s childhood, the free-spirited hedonism of the
Sixties, and the urban domesticity of 1980s Portsmouth, this is an
intimate, lyrical and deeply moving portrait of a family crumbling
under the weight of past mistakes.
Isabel Ashdown lives in West Sussex with her carpenter husband and
two children. She worked in product marketing for 15 years, frequently
travelling throughout Europe and the United States. Despite not having
written since school, in 2004 she gave up her senior management role to
test her long-held ambition to become a writer, enrolling on a BA in
Creative Writing at Chichester University. In 2007 she graduated with a
first class honours degree in Creative Writing, and received the Hugo
Donnelly Prize for Outstanding Academic Achievement. She went on to win
the 2008 Mail on Sunday Novel Competition with an extract from
Glasshopper. Isabel recently gained an MA in Creative Writing with
Distinction, for extracts from her second novel Hurry Up and Wait, which
will be published by Myriad in 2011. Isabel Ashdown recently launched
The Chichester Book Club - a new website dedicated to introducing local
readers to books and authors in their region.
