Descent

Product Description

This wonderfully acute & unsettling novel charts the trajectory of a woman's life & a couple's relationship during the last decade of the 20th century. Against a backdrop of the seismic nineties, & framed by two air disasters (Lockerbie late 1988 & the twin towers 9/11 2001), it's the story of Genevieve, psychiatric nurse, wife, mother, daughter, who's trying to keep a whole lot of stuff airborne while things fall apart, inside & out. Her husband is a filmmaker, usually absent, at first on small-budget art films (The Snow Queen) in out of the way places. But his career takes off, & suddenly he's making big budget star-vehicle movies (still The Snow Queen) in exotic locations. While her life narrows (babies, breastfeeding, builders), his expands: this is her narrative, addressed to him, trying to make sense of their lives & the forces
- external & internal, family history & genetics, ambition & domesticity
- which pull them apart. Her work, which drives her nuts but keeps her sane, her anarchic friend & colleague Sid, & the sad, crazed women in her charge provide a hilarious, heartbreaking backdrop to a world going off the rails. Unputdownable, funny & sad, Descent marks the arrival of a talented new novelist.