Description
''Completely original, raw and warm'' Evening Standard Books of the Summer
''Poignant... written with intelligence and tears'' Ben Okri
''Nuanced, absorbing and moving... extraordinary'' Observer
''Raw, poetic, beautifully formed'' Daisy Johnson
When Xanthi Barker''s father died when she was in her mid twenties, she could make no sense of her grief for a man who had been absent for most of her life. Her father, poet Sebastian Barker, had left Xanthi, her mother and her brother to pursue writing and a new relationship, when Xanthi was a baby. Growing up she had always struggled to reconcile his extravagant affection - a rocking horse crafted from scavenged wood, the endless stream of poems and drawings and letters, conversations that spiralled from the structure of starlight to philosophy to Bruce Springsteen - with the fact that he could not be depended upon for more everyday things. Tho
