Finding Helen

In his late 40s, stuck in a career and a marriage that have each lost their lustre, Chris is someone to whom life never quite kept its promise. One morning, as he is leaving for work, he hears a song on the radio: a song that transports him back to an altogether better, happier time – the early 1970s, when youth, idealism and music, especially the music of singer-songwriter Helen Leonrd, were all that really mattered. Haunted by a raw sense of loss and a growing resentment at how life has turned out, Chris – goaded on by the mysterious, elusive apparition of the 'Beagle Man' – begins a physical, spiritual and emotional quest. Revisiting old haunts and old memories, he searches for an answer to a question that has lain unanswered for nearly 30 years: what did Fate hold in store for the woman he devoted himself to so entirely all those years ago – the maddening, mercurial, mischievous Helen Leonard... Witty, elegiac, and above all, true, FINDING HELEN is a novel about the power of memory and the consequences of loss – of innocence, idealism and youth.

”A complex, darkly beautiful novel, filled with ominous possibilities and disturbing hints...this is English literary fiction at its best.” – Joanne Harris

”His prose is as flexible and dangerous as a rapier...his stories go for both the head and the heart” – Neil Gaiman