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Belonging by Ron Butlin
Belonging, by Ron Butlin, is published in paperback by Serpent's Tail, priced £7.99. Available now.
Acclaimed Scottish author Ron Butlin's latest book is a deceptively slim volume for such a complex and disturbing story.
Drifter Jack McCall has come a long way from his simple Edinburgh childhood. A child prodigy pianist, Jack's life changes when his talent for playing music inexplicably dries up.
Tossed from happy childhood to an aimless adulthood, he wanders from place to place, and dead-end job to dead-end job.
It looks as if things are taking a turn for the better for Jack when he hooks up with the troubled Anna, and the pair land a job at a snazzy Alpine ski resort.
The super-rich owners come rarely to their luxury penthouses, and there is Champagne, caviar and the good life just there for the picking.
Life is sweet, even if Anna is a little unpredictable at times.
But how wrong can one man be? And as Jack looks back on what unfolds, he places the blame firmly at the door of the enigmatic Therese, the girl with firework-coloured hair who arrives one day on the arm of a millionaire old enough to be her father.
Fireworks is what follows, as Jack once more cuts and runs.... Ending up living a wilderness existence with Therese in a place laughingly called Paradise.
As Adam found with Eve, so Jack discovers Therese is not to be trusted. And so a domino effect of events is set in train which will change things forever, for Jack, Therese and the other inhabitants of this Spanish wasteland.
At the end of it all, does Jack really belong? And is the reader really bothered?
This is a stark, depressing, yet thought-provoking book which is an ultimately satisfying read.
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Weather for Scarborough
Wednesday 08 February 2012
Today
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