The novels, so far, in reverse chronological order (of publication). All are published in paperback by Sceptre, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton (Hodder Headline PLC), at 338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH. Their distributor is Bookpoint. A good bookshop should be able to track any of them down, but the most recent will be the easiest. If you are trying to buy online, be sure to go through Amazon.co.uk as opposed to Amazon.com, which lists them all as out of print to cover their own inadequacies. Handsome Men Are Slightly Sunburnt is listed under STORIES on this site.
The boy Coorg is born into a commune in Devon in 1963 and declared to be
the new Messiah. Six years later his Irish grandparents kidnap him and take
him back to New Ross, Catholicism and another version of unreality altogether.
The first of a quartet (and the more you annoy me about it, the longer it
will take to get on with the second).
Aaron Gunn is endowed with a near-perfect life. Only love has eluded his
wish-list, and when it comes along he is spectacularly unprepared for the
consequences. Not a novel for the squeamish among you.
God Himself breaks His silence to narrate this polysexual whodunnit, revealing
that even He was obsessed with the charismatic Rory Dixon, and that omnipotence
isn't all it's made out to be. Recommended as therapy for those who hold
on to the Christian superstitions.
John G. Moore is a rural teenager, afraid of the dark and terrified of
inheriting his mother's madness. He is attracted by the self-possession
of Godfrey Temple. Hero-worship, inevitably, has its drawbacks. Though
published third, this was my baby book, written when I was a teenager
myself. Some of my so-called friends say it is the best. I am obliged
to disagree.
Adam and Norah Parnell take some time off in the Scottish Highlands,
where Adam befriends Dougie Millar, a man scarred by never having known
his father. Adam concludes that Dougie is the lucky one: a physically
absent father being infinitely preferable to his own experience of an
emotionally absent father, and decides to remedy the situation by persuading
his own father to commit suicide. Though not fantastically received at
the time, this book is beginning to come into its own.
Evelyn Cotton,
a reluctant proto-feminist, has known a variety of love at the hands of
men over the years. Through all of it, the silent and anguished love of
the narrator is constant. Then Hugh Longford arrives, and with him a love
that is, finally, both sincere and tangible, confounding both Evelyn and
her chronicler. A prizewinner in its time.