When Maggie Nix’s ageing hippy mother dies, Maggie decides she needs a job, something that will return her to the world. But the particular world she has in mind is that of her own childhood. She applies for the job of amanuensis to Kenneth Earl, a retired man living alone in his rambling house who wants to engage in a form of recollection of his own. Music has been the most important element in his life, and he intends to write a kind of musical memoir, which will recapture the feelings and ideas that every single one of his four thousand long-playing records aroused in him. As Maggie and Kenneth embark on this great task, they strike up an odd and strangely affectionate relationship. But what Kenneth doesn’t know is that Maggie stayed briefly in his house once before, under very different circumstances. Trezza Azzopardi’s work has been described as ‘scalding’ and ‘thrilling’. In her fourth novel the Booker-shortlisted author gives us another heart-stopping story written in a virtuoso style she has made all her own. Author: Azzopardi, Trezza Category: Fiction Publisher: UK: Picador Schedule: Publication: May 2010