Publisher's Synopsis
Publication of Kensington Gardens marks the English language debut of one of Latin AmericaÆs most brilliant, playful, and stylish novelists, Rodrigo Fresan. Spanning more than a century from the late Victorian period -- and the intimately-drawn details of the life of JM Barrie -- to the dawn of the new millennium -- and the fractured life of an internationally acclaimed childrenÆs novelist, Peter Hook -- Kensington Gardens weaves an intricate catÆs cradle of narratives around the Lysergic-London of the Swinging Sixties and the boy who never grew up. Hook is a survivor and witness to a period littered with corpses and casualties. Growing up in a vast west London estate called Neverland, his childhood was shaped by the mysterious, premature death of his younger brother, his parentsÆ rock n roll lifestyle and his fatherÆs performances in a seminal band of the time, the Beaten (aka) The Beaten Victorians (aka) The Victorians. Yet despite (or perhaps because of) such dysfunctional beginnings, Hook has become the most successful childrenÆs author of his generation as the author of the time-travelling, Jim Yang. In Kensington Gardens, Hook narrates his story (and that of Barrie, Peter Pan and Llewelyn Davies) to Keiko Kai, the Japanese actor cursed with the role of playing Jim Yang in the blockbuster movies of his creation. Over the course of one night in a flat in Kensington Gardens, a fantastical and terrible story emerges; a story of shadow identities and suicide, lost boys and found orphans. Coloured with unique splashes of Psychedelic Edwardiana, Kensington Gardens is an exploration of the charms and perils of ChildrenÆs Literature, told in the torrential prose of a contemporary master.
