Trading Futures

Product Description

' With his gallows humour & observational wit Jim Powell gives us a vivid portrait of a man in meltdown' Daily Mail When I was small my mother showed me how to grow a carrot from a carrot She filled a jam jar with water cut the top off a carrot ran a cocktail stick horizontally through the stub & suspended it over the jar just touching the water In time roots sprouted & when they were long enough & strong enough the plant was translated to the garden & new carrots grew This was one of the many exciting ways in which I was prepared for adult life This is Matthew Oxenhay at sixty a stranger to his wife an embarrassment to his children & failed former contender for the top job at his City firm Seizing on his birthday party as an opportunity to deliver some rather crushing home truths to his assembled loved ones it seems as though Matthew might have hit rock bottom The truth however is that he has some way to go yet With forensic precision & mordant wit Matthew unpicks the threads that bind him a comfortable home in the suburbs a career spent trading futures & a life that bears little resemblance to the one he imagined for himself at twenty When he unexpectedly bumps into Anna (the one who got away) the stage is set for an epic unravelling Darkly funny Trading Futures forces us to confront how change like death is an inevitable fact of life feared by most it can transform or overwhelm us This is a brilliantly observed novel for fans of works such as John Lanchester's Mr Phillips & On Chesil Beach by Ian Mc Ewan It also featured as Radio 4's Book at Bedtime