Author(s): Jonathan Meades

Fiction

"One of the funniest and truest writers we have. No one understands England better than Meades." STEPHEN FRY Henry Fowler was twice, long ago, runner-up in the Oil Fuels Guild-sponsored Young Funeral Director of the Year competition. His intense loyalties are to his parents, to his wife and children, to the family firm and the trade it practises, to his native south-east London and to his best friend Curly. But when Henry cuts a lock of his sleeping daughter's hair, the foundations of a world, a family and an identity begin to rock. "Jonathan Meades has been compared, favourably, to Rabelais and, flatteringly, to Swift. The truth is that he outstrips both in the gaudiness of his imaginationFew works of fiction will surpass its toxicity." TLS