“How many ghosts am I to have in my life, I asked myself, how many lost loves?”
John Fenlon is a middle-aged office worker whose life outside work is devoted to his disabled son Tony. When Tony is hospitalised a desperate John begins to write to his wife, Therese, who left him a decade earlier just after the birth of Tony. The letters recount Tony’s struggle for health, but also John’s day to day existence, his work, the people he encounters, and more than anything, his memories, his loneliness, his profound sense of loss, and his undying love for Therese. He has had no contact with her since she left him, and he does not know where she is living. And so his letters are directed to the sky and the Universe while addressed plaintively to Therese. As Tony’s condition worsens this novel of separation and loss winds its way towards a conclusion of great lyrical beauty.