The Clocks in This House All Tell Different Times
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By Xan Brooks
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Shortlisted for the 2017 Costa First Novel Award
Shortlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award 2018
Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2018
Longlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
New Faces of Fiction 2017, Observer
Observer Fiction to look out for in 2017
The Irish Times What To Look Out for in 2017 from Independent Publishers
Jen Campbell’s ‘Most Anticipated Books of 2017’
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A dark social-realist fairytale, spotlighting the shadowy underside of 1920s England
Summer 1923: the modern world. Orphaned Lucy Marsh climbs into the back of an old army truck and is whisked off to the woods north of London – a land haunted by the past, where lost souls and monsters conceal themselves in the trees.
In a sunlit clearing she meets the ‘funny men’, a quartet of disfigured ex-soldiers named after Dorothy’s companions in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Here are the loved and the damaged, dark forests and darker histories, and the ever-present risk of discovery and violent retribution. Xan Brooks’ stunning debut is heartbreaking, disturbing and redemptive.
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I really loved this fantasticly rich, novel. I was hooked from the start, when Lucy is first taken to the forest, right through getting to know the soldiers damaged and disfigured in the war, through all that happens as they and the echoes of war continue to cause damage to others, to the bitter and not so bitter endings. It's a post first world war story unlike any other, totally original, superbly well written, wholly entertaining and very powerful. The horrendous damage that war does and continues to do for years after it is declared over, not only to the soldiers but to everyone connected with them, is here, writ large, yet somehow in a quite unlaboured way. The characters are convincing and mostly likeable and the situations are sometimes funny, sometimes ironic and sometimes just downright horrific. But always engrossing. Highly recommended.
