Book description
Set in 1968 in the Parisian suburbs,
No Telling
is narrated by twelve-year-old Gilles as he approaches his Solemn
Communion, puberty, and some sense of the chaos around him. His home is
deeply dysfunctional: a dithering mother, a hard-drinking, womanising
uncle who becomes his stepfather, and an older sister, Carole - an
unbalanced revolutionary who hasn't danced her ballet steps since the
death of their real father. Gilles is blithely unaware that any of this
is out of the ordinary, as he and his friend Christophe try and piece
together a world from fragments of rumour and hushed adult conversation.
There is a deeper trauma here, however, far more shocking than anything
Gilles could have dreamt of - a mystery it will take the events of the
novel and eight years to resolve. Adam Thorpe was born in Paris in
1956. His first novel, Ulverton
, was published in 1992, and he has written nine others - most recently
Flight
- two collections of stories and five books of poetry. His new
translation of Madame Bovary
has just been published by Vintage. He lives in France with his wife
and family.
