Dimensions
138 x 209 x 23mm
Jim Hillyer is 74, a retired Canadian professor of Victorian literature. His eldest daughter, Susan, has just been diagnosed with cancer. Her mother died of the disease, and father and daughter both know too well what a diagnosis of "aggressive" means.
As he ponders his daughter's fate, and her suggestion that she might forego treatment, a chance encounter in a London street brings Jim face to face with the companion of a summer sixty years ago. Gabriel Fontaine had wealthy parents, a glamorous mother, movie–star good looks – and legs paralysed by polio. It was wartime, and Jim had been packed off to his uncle's on the coast. And so the sulky 14 year old Jim and the sophisticated 16 year old Gabriel were thrown together for the summer.Now exhausted by illness, Gabriel is delighted to renew the acquaintance, and makes a very unusual request: would Jim accompany him and his nurse to Switzerland?As their journey unfolds, so too do Jim's memories of that summer so many years ago –– memories of the glamorous yet crippled boy and his stories, who won the heart of Odette – the same Odette Jim obsessively desired. Entwining these two stories spanning past and present, cruelty and desire, Richard B. Wright weaves a memorable meditation on life and memory, love and death.
