The Scent of Dried Roses: One family and the end of English Suburbia - an elegy (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Lott, Tim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141191481 ISBN 13: 9780141191485

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2009

Synopsis

Tim Lott's parents, Jack and Jean, met at the Empire Snooker Hall, Ealing, in 1951, in a world that to him now seems 'as strange as China'. In this extraordinarily moving exploration of his parents' lives, his mother's inexplicable suicide in her late fifties and his own bouts of depression, Tim Lott conjures up the pebble-dashed home of his childhood and the rapidly changing landscape of postwar suburban England. It is a story of grief, loss and dislocation, yet also of the power of memory and the bonds of family love.

About this title

About the Author

Tim Lott was born in 1956 in Southall, west London, the son of a Notting Hill greengrocer. In 1976, he took a job on the pop magazine Sounds, and in 1980, he set up the first glossy colour pop magazine, Flexipop! He left the venture in 1983 to attend the London School of Economics and after graduating accepted the editorship of the listings magazine City Limits. He resigned after only two weeks, and a period of acute depressive illness followed, during which his parents nursed him back to health. Shortly afterwards his mother, Jean, committed suicide. The Scent of Dried Roses grew from an Esquire article on Jean's depression and suicide, and its publication in 1996 met with universal acclaim.

Lott's novels include White City Blue, winner of the 1999 Whitbread First Novel award; Rumours of a Hurricane (2002); The Love Secrets of Don Juan (2003); The Seymour Tapes (2005) and, Fearless (2007), a children's book.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0141191481
• ISBN 13: 9780141191485
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304