Kansas in August
A Novel
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A riotous dark comedy set in the backstreets of London about an unconventional love triangle, a lonely teacher, and a lost baby.
Hilary Metcalfe is an English teacher who loathes his work so thoroughly that he requires a half bottle of scotch in order to grade a stack of homework. His only joys are private ones: American musicals, from South Pacific to The King and I, and his absolutely gorgeous lover, Rufus, whom he has utterly failed to domesticate. Once, he had dreams of being an actor, a star of London’s West End. Now he would settle for the knowledge that Rufus is his and his alone. He’ll get neither—but he may get something much better instead.
When Rufus stands him up on his birthday, Hilary discovers something astonishing in the subway station: a frightened, abandoned baby boy. Drunk and lonely, Hilary brings the baby home to his seedy Shepherd’s Bush flat, and soon finds he cannot live without the child. As Rufus falls into a romantic encounter with, of all people, Hilary’s sister, the three are caught in a bizarre love triangle—with a baby in the middle.
A spiritual sequel to Patrick Gale’s second London novel, Ease, this is a charming portrait of the British capital at its most cosmopolitan. For anyone who has ever wished for a life different from his own, Kansas in August is a captivating tale.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Another very funny, drily British novel by the author of Ease and The Aerodynamics of Pork. Hilary Metcalfe, an English teacher addicted to American musical comedy recordings, celebrates his 25th birthday alone, his gorgeous bisexual lover Rufus having stood him up. In an inebriated state, Hilary discovers an abandoned infant in the subway and takes the baby home to his seedy West London digs above an Indian grocery. Meanwhile, Rufus, unfortunately detained in a female student's bed, steps out of it and almost at once into the arms of Hilary's sister Henry (for Henrietta), a psychiatrist rarely impressed by masculine charm. As the baby wraps his fingers more and more tightly around Hilary's heart, he comes under the ever-watchful eye of his landlord's adoring adolescent daughter, who has made a shrine of his every discarded envelope and wornout shoelace. Now Sumitra recognizes Hilary's true divinity: he is a father who bears his own child, a Prince God. The bawdy narrative strands are cleverly woven together with witty and urbane dialogue and piquant characterization, so that the reader is thoroughly absorbed in this irreverent tour de force.
