Dimensions
129 x 198 x 25mm
Kate Thomas was beautiful, intelligent, witty, passionate and sexy. Now, at 99, she is paralysed by a stroke, and unable to speak. She escapes from the reality of a hospital ward full of sad, mad and bad old women by playing to herself the video of her life.
What a life it has been. Her six marriages have ended in suicide, a husband's adultery, another husband's deportation as a dangerous alien, a union dispute, a murder, and a natural death. But Kate's journey through the twentieth century is more than an escape. It is a search for the truth - about life, death, the acceptance of death, and which of her three sons murdered her fifth husband.
This is a novel rich in memorable characters, from Kate's narrow but loving Welsh family to the wild members of an artists' colony in Cornwall; from Midland piston manufacturers to an investigative journalist whose own life cannot bear investigation; from BBC executives to a ward run by two nurses with eating disorders and the amazing Doctor Ramgobi. This is David Nobb's most ambitious book, and his best.