Bookshelf
GH’s books director, Joanne Finney, shares her must-reads for the month
I’ve been a fan of Rachel Joyce’s writing since her debut, The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry. Her new novel, The Homemade God, is a darker book in tone and subject, but equally compelling. Having lost their mum when they were young, Goose and his three sisters have been raised by their dad, Vic, a world-famous artist whose parenting style could at best be described as laissez-faire and at worst neglectful. A big drinker and womaniser, Vic is a larger-than-life presence who dominates the family.
When he announces in his 70s that he’s planning to marry a woman nearly 50 years his junior, his children are baffled. Over the next couple of months, he begins to pull away – only contacting them to let them know he’s taken his new wife, Bella-Mae, to the family’s holiday home on an island in Italy to paint ‘a new masterpiece’. Then they receive a shocking call; their father has drowned in suspicious circumstances in Lake Orta.