I do like Patrick Gale's writing. He's fast becoming one of those authors I'd read anything by, even if it was just the blurb on the back of a cereal box.Essentially, this novel is about Laura and Ben, lost love and rekindling old relationships. The supporting characters however are equally as i...
Patrick Gale is a prolific author but I was only introduced to his writing two years ago by my sister when she recommended Notes from An Exhibition(2007) and lent me a copy of The Whole Day Through(2009), the latter which I never reviewed for some reason, although I do remember liking it. Instant...
This rather mundane, superficial and ultimately predictable novel about a teenage girl growing up with two gay schoolchums is not Patrick Gale at his best, unfortunately. Maybe because the book is written from the perspective of someone who is a generation younger than the author, Gale's usually ...
Lawrence Frost has neither father nor siblings, and fits so awkwardly into his worldly mother's life that he might have dropped from the sky. A true misfit, he grows up happier communing with nature than with people. While he is straightforward, honest, and a doting father, he can be a difficult,...
Evan Kirby, an American academic specialising in angelology and demonology, visits the English cathedral city of Barrowcester (pronounced Brewster) to pursue his studies at the cathedral’s ancient library.There he finds that the chintzy perfection of the place masks a network of passionate secret...
A moving and intensely felt examination of the steps to which we will go to seek protection and security in others. Returning to haunted Cornish landscapes familiar from other Gale novels, it is the story of individuals in search of a family. Dido, the nine-year-old heroine and emotional centre o...
Ease is the story of Domina, a successful playwright who needs inspiration for her next writing. She moves to London to escape her bitchy friend and long term partner, looking for ideas and adventure. She moves into a bed sit and the story is the tale of what and who she finds there.Gale's charac...
A collection of Patrick Gale's most brilliant pieces of short fiction. The subjects are wide-ranging and various -- curious childhood loyalties, long-hidden memories, newly discovered joys, startling secrets, dislocated relationships, overwhelming, thrilling passions. In prose which is vivid and ...
Love,death,heartbreak, mental illness, homosexuality. Patrick Gale tackles all these and more with humor and poignancy. I love his writing; he is honest without being sentimental. His characters are so fully rounded I feel I know each one by the end of the book, and I care about each one. "Li...
Patrick Gale´s novel Kansas In August was an interesting, if never a very engaging read. It features some rather strange people. There is a man called Hilary and a woman called Henry. They are brother and sister. They share a lover, a bisexual guy called Rufus, but neither brother nor sister is a...
This was a really clever book in mu opinion which drew me on and into the lives of the characters. It starts with an artist's death and then the book is a cleverly constructed look at the lives of all who were intertwined with her. When i say constructed that might give the wrong impression becau...
A composer who finds success in his later years surveys his grandchildren as they come to terms with the harsher facts of modern life.
Carrie had almost wept when Dad woke her with a gentle touch to her shoulder and the murmur of her name. Jim did cry, of course, furious at being woken next but Carrie had the knack of stilling him, jiggling him quickly on her hip while Dad found him clothes from the chest of drawers. Dad and Mum...
This time he took the town centre route. ‘You’re a dark horse,’ he told Bobby. ‘You never told me you were reading.’ ‘I don’t tell you everything.’ ‘Don’t I know it! How’s your little problem, by the way?’ ‘What?’ ‘You know. Down there. Little friends?’ ‘Shut up!’ Bobby sl...
Between Moose Jaw and Saskatoon, Harry had certainly seen stretches that seemed to bear out the jibe, but as he left the Battlefords behind and drove the laden cart along the almost deserted dirt road towards Cut Knife, he was pleased to see mature stands of trees and then even a hill or two. It ...
They each had a slightly different cattle call. His older brother produced a low, booming sound midway between a moo and a foghorn. Their father’s call had two notes, the second lower than the first, and usually had a trace of words to it, a sort of weary ‘come ‘long’. His own tended to emerge as...