![]() While Stella is wondering what to do with her life – “The family is raised – the work’s done. It demonstrates, too, how alcohol can blot out every other concern. ![]() This unflinching attention to the textural detail of minute-by-minute existence slowly builds into a profound exploration of the biggest themes in both public and private life: faith, politics and fanaticism love and loneliness joint compromise and individual purpose. With acute, understated tenderness, he charts the medical palaver and hyper-awareness of the body’s fragility that come with age: the noisily popping blister packs of pills the “blood-red winter trees” Gerry sees as he stares into his own bleary eyes the toilet seat slightly lower than at home, meaning he “panicked in the last few millimetres of his descent”. It is extraordinary how his blunt, declarative sentences translate the fiddly minutiae of life – the pleated paper from a bar of hotel soap, the cellophane packaging round a pair of pyjamas – into utterly gripping prose. MacLaverty takes us from the perspective of one to the other with great efficiency and delicacy as they wait for a taxi to the airport, pass round the Werther’s Originals in the departure lounge, arrange their Amsterdam hotel room into a temporary home. ![]()
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