Empathy is a luxury few people can afford. Malcolm, an ageing hairdresser, whose love for his Alzheimer's-victim lover is fading fast, is too oppressed by his domestic life to notice the world outside. Alison, his colleague, is blithely innocent; she believes that hairdressing brings happiness, and doesn't quite believe in pain. Both are in their own ways blind, until a colleague's neo-fascist murder unites them in an emotional journey to the Auschwitz Museum, where they are forced to confront the suffering of others, and to face the possibility of life.
Unexpectedly witty, devastatingly frank, this is a brave and extraordinarily enjoyable novel.
