Somebody Loves Us All

(Paperback)

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Description

Paddy Thompson, speech therapist, newspaper columnist, is fifty and happy. His dark period is behind him: a failed marriage, a career crisis. Now he lives with Helena ('the best thing that ever happened to him'), helps kids with their speech problems, and has moved his mother into the next-door apartment. His life feels sane and settled. So what are these new signs of upset One of his clients refuses to speak. Helena is under stress at work. His newspaper column has run out of puff. Paddy buys a bicycle. He feels, with a typical metaphorical flourish, that 'one of those great wheels of life had begun a revolution'. Then his mother presents him with the biggest challenge of his life. What follows, in this wonderfully expansive novel, takes Paddy deep into the vortex of family love. The book, boldly and exuberantly, asks large questions about how we express ourselves, not only through speech but also through gesture, action, and silence.

Author Bio

Damien Wilkins teaches at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University. He isthe author of eight books, including Chemistry, The Fainter, For Everyone Concerned, Little Masters, The Miserables, and Nineteen Windows Under Ash. He is the editor of Great Sporting Moments: The Best of Sport Magazine 19882004.