In the Falling Snow (Vintage International) - Softcover

Phillips, Caryl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 030747383X ISBN 13: 9780307473837

Publisher: Vintage, 2010

Synopsis

The streets of modern-day London are hectic, multicultural, and difficult to read if you are a white-collar, middle-aged man. Keith is a social worker who, following a brief affair with a colleague, finds himself living alone in a flat a few streets away from his wife, Annabelle, and his teenage son. His domestic problems, allied with growing tensions at work, profoundly undermine his peace of mind. Keith attempts to take refuge in a long-cherished writing project and turns his attention to the plight of his ageing father, but for the first time in his life he feels extremely vulnerable as a black man in English society. Annabelle met Keith twenty-five years ago at university, and she watches the man she married - against the wishes of her English parents - as he appears to be losing his grip on his life. However, after three years of estrangement, she realises that despite her disappointment with her former husband, the pair of them have no choice but to close ranks and protect their son, who seems to have become increasingly involved with street gangs and a world that is entirely alien to them. A brilliant and penetrating story of contemporary Britain, "In the Falling Snow" is Caryl Phillips' finest novel yet.

About this title

Product Description:

From one of our most admired fiction writers: the searing story of breakdown and recovery in the life of one man and of a society moving from one idea of itself to another.

Keith--born in England in the early 1960s to immigrant West Indian parents but primarily raised by his white stepmother--is a social worker heading a Race Equality unit in London whose life has come undone. He is separated from his wife of twenty years, kept at arm's length by his teenage son, estranged from his father, and accused of harassment by a coworker. And beneath it all, he has a desperate feeling that his work--even in fact his life--is no longer relevant.

Deeply moving in its portrayal of the vagaries of family love and bold in its scrutiny of the personal politics of race, this is Caryl Phillips's most powerful novel yet.

Review:

"[Phillips is] an insightful and sympathetic chronicler of race, British identity, and the immigrant experience." --The Christian Science Monitor

"[A] serious novel. . . . [Keith's father's] discourse of ideas and anecdotes is gritty, brilliant, remarkable." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Phillips displays his considerable writing skills. His ear for speech is acute; his eye for the cityscapes of both London and the north of England is good; his sense of the history of England in the 1960s is sure and, most significantly, he has a dramatist's talent for creating telling scenes and incidents." --Washington Times

"Throughout Phillips's fiction and nonfiction, he focuses on people who are caught in between places, desires, and circumstances of history. . . . [Here, ] he elegantly handles a complicated time scheme, shifting smoothly between Keith's present and memories of his past." --World Literature Review

"Phillips has written extensively . . . about the legacy of the slave trade and the immigrant experience. . . . The hero's dying father delivers an incandescent soliloquy." --The New Yorker

"Caryl Phillips is an alpha-class writer, both as a phrase-maker and as an observer of human nature." --Mail on Sunday (UK)

"Phillips's excellent reputation is well deserved. He explores grand themes by peering expertly through the net curtains of everyday life. Intelligent, gripping, understated and affecting, this is a brilliant account of how real life can get in the way of a family's dreams." --Birmingham Post (UK)

"Convincing....Impressive . . . The conclusion is expertly done; the sense of loss it conjures, lasting." --Daily Mail (UK)

"Richly reflective....[Offers] significant rewards." -The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 030747383X
• ISBN 13: 9780307473837
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320