Description: Joseph Connolly is the critically acclaimed writer of eleven novels published by Faber & Faber (all of which are in print) as well as various non-fiction works including biographies of PG Wodehouse and Jerome K Jerome
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“A lot of beautifully observed detail about London in 1964. It’s very funny, and very sharp.”
‘I am 64. Not believable. How did all those years fly by? How did I, George Reilly, go from being a fresh-faced teenager to just so bloody old . . .? Because it is the other 64 I am now remembering: 1964, oh yes – that is when it started happening for me. That was the year when the Sixties just erupted – and me, I wanted everything. And there were so many people all around me who actually seemed to have it. They truly did seem to have the lot: the cars, the clothes – the money, the glamour. And the girls .
From being nineteen and perpetually broke, forty-five years on George Reilly is now rich, successful and very pleased with how his life has turned out. He can look back with indulgence on the follies of his teenage self, at the pleasures of loves and friendships and the pain at their eventual loss. Though he doesn’t yet realise that his past was never really behind him and that his precise and ordered existence is poised to descend into wholly unexpected turmoil.