Tree Surgery for Beginners - Softcover

Gale, Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006550746 ISBN 13: 9780006550747

Publisher: Flamingo, 2002

Synopsis

A vivid and compelling portrait of a man at odds with himself; and an extended family of friends and lovers trying to take its proper shape.

Lawrence Frost has neither father nor siblings, and fits so awkwardly into his worldly mother’s life he might have dropped from the sky. Like many such heroes, he grows up happier with plants than people. While he is straightforward, honest, and a doting dad, he can be a difficult, taciturn husband – but he’s the last person one would suspect of being a killer.

Waking one morning to find himself branded a wife-beater and under suspicion of murder, his small world falls apart as he loses wife, daughter, liberty, livelihood and, almost, his mind.

About this title

About the Author

Patrick Gale was born in 1962 on the Isle of Wight. He was educated at Winchester and Oxford, and now lives in north Cornwall.

From the Back Cover

'TREE SURGERY FOR BEGINNERS' Patrick Gale

"Lawrence Frost is a gauche, likeable tree surgeon with a theatrical mother and a rather frosty wife. When the latter disappears, he is suspected of her murder, and this is the catalyst for a series of adventures, including flight to the Caribbean and an affair with the strapping, six-foot Lala, a Neapolitan transsexual (or is s/he?), all leading to the Redemption of Lawrence. A supporting cast of wonderfully eccentric minor characters adds to the readability and charm. What is delightful about Gale's fiction is that it so warmly and convincingly illuminates ordinary lives and interests."
CHRISTOPHER HART, 'Daily Telegraph'

"'Tree Surgery for Beginners' exerts the unmistakable force of a novelist in the process of discovering a new, strong voice. With this alarming and technically very skilful romance, he is decidedly a man to watch."
PHILIP HENSHER, 'Mail on Sunday'

"Lawrence's natural condition is a frustrated inarticulacy… Gale's own voice, by contrast, is elegant and elusive… The paraphernalia of 'Tree Surgery for Beginners' may be of the moment – a world of gyms, psychotherapists and New Age havens – but the hopefulness of the narrative and the solidity of its central character make it a lasting creation."
DAVID HORSPOOL, 'TLS'

"A tribute to Patrick Gale's mastery of narrative… consistently entertaining but also, in places, quietly moving. The deracinated hero, with his existential despair, is very well done; while the women who buttress his fragile ego are also delineated with skill and feeling."
JULIA FLYNN, 'Sunday Telegraph'

Edition details

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0006550746
• ISBN 13: 9780006550747
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288