Back Trouble
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
From the highly-acclaimed author of SMALL PLEASURES - winner of the 2022 British Book Awards.
On the brink of forty, newly single with a failed business, Philip thought he had reached an all-time low. . .
It only needed a discarded chip on a South London street to lay him literally flat. So, bedbound and bored, Philip naturally starts to write the story of his life.
But between the mundane catalogue of seaside holidays and bodged DIY, broken relationships and unspoken truths, more surprises are revealed - both comic and touching - than Philip or his family ever bargained for. Maybe there will even be a happy ending.
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Praise for Clare Chambers:
'A funny book which slips in some acute and painful observations on the side' The Times
'Chambers' eye for undemonstrative details achieves a Larkin-esque lucidity' The Guardian on Small Pleasures
'A funny and moving story with a great deal of style!' Daily Express
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This tender study of a middle-aged London man who finally completes his long-delayed passage into adulthood is a novel of small pleasures that ultimately exceeds the sum of its parts. Philip Scrivener has a novel's worth of problems, including the spinal difficulties of the title, which give him time to pen this first-person flashback, and a pair of intrusive parents who pester him with alarming regularity. He's also dodging creditors, who are after the assets from his failing self-help publishing company, and trying to maintain a problematic relationship with Kate, a visiting New Zealander whose visa is due to expire. Chambers (Uncertain Terms) depicts the compassionate Philip's chronic reluctance to act in a series of gentle, comic scenes, rendering her cowardly hero's family as endearingly eccentric while unmawkishly presenting the gradually deepening feelings between him and Kate. When events finally force Philip into action, his decisions are satisfying and believable, if a bit predictable. In an effective less-is-more approach, Chambers finds fresh life in the well-worn turf of family and relationships.
