Publisher's Synopsis
When aspiring novelist Christopher Flinders drops out of university to write his masterpiece, his family is sceptical. But when he is taken up by the London editor Owen Goddard and his wife Diana, success seems imminent. From a charmless life, growing up in an unlovely suburb with unambitious parents and a semi-vagrant brother, he is captivated by his cultured mentors. However, Christopher makes a desperate misjudgement which results in disaster for all involved. Shattered, he withdraws from London to live in rural Yorkshire, to work and live a life marked by mediocrity. Twenty years on, a young academic researching Owen Goddard seeks him out, and Christopher is forced to exhume his past - setting him on a path to a devastating and life-changing discovery.
