Novels

My latest novel is East Fortune which Bloomsbury are publishing in April 2009. It's set in Scotland in 2005 and is the story of three brothers returning to their family home in East Fortune. It's about secrets and rivalries, birth and death, hope and desire.

Canvey Island has just been published by The Other Press in New York. It tells the story of changing times in post-war Britain over forty years, concentrating on one family, beginning with the epic floods of 1953.

It's partly about secrets – how much do we really want to know about the lives of our parents, and how much do we want our children to know about us? Sometimes a family needs its secrets.

It's also a novel about past wounds and past passions, about growing up and growing old, about love, hope and reconciliation.

The other two books I have written are: The Discovery of Chocolate, a philosophical comedy about a man who lives on chocolate and who can't die; and The Colour of Heaven, a novel about ultramarine blue, the invention of spectacles, love, death and paradise.

Click on the titles to link to more information – or find out a bit of background.