The Rest Just Follows
Author: Glenn Patterson
Format: Paperback, 125mm x 200mm, 250g, 368 pages
Published: Faber & Faber, United Kingdom, 2015
First of September 1974. Craig Robinson is starting secondary school. Instinct tells him he needs to keep his head down. The last thing he needs, therefore, is someone carrying the name St John Nimmo to be sent to sit beside him, but that is what he gets.
Across town Maxine Neill is starting her own new school, convinced that she shouldn't be there at all. She should be where Craig and St John are. Not that she has met either of them yet. Though meet them she will, and more.
Their lives and hers - and the lives of the entire Nimmo family - become entwined as pre-teens turn to teens, turn to twenties and thirties, turn inevitably to the eff decades and they go about the business of filling the spaces vacated by the generations that went before. It's called growing up, never mind that most of the time it feels like making it up as they go along, and sometimes like fucking up completely.
Glenn Patterson is the author of eight previous novels, the most recent of which, The Mill for Grinding Old People Young, was the 2012 Once City One Book choice for Belfast. He is the cowriter of Good Vibrations (BBC Films/The Works), an award-winning movie based on the life of Belfast punk impresario Terri Hooley. He is currently at work on a novel set in the DeLorean motor plant in the early 1980s; a related screenplay has already been commissioned. He lives in Belfast.
Author: Glenn Patterson
Format: Paperback, 125mm x 200mm, 250g, 368 pages
Published: Faber & Faber, United Kingdom, 2015
First of September 1974. Craig Robinson is starting secondary school. Instinct tells him he needs to keep his head down. The last thing he needs, therefore, is someone carrying the name St John Nimmo to be sent to sit beside him, but that is what he gets.
Across town Maxine Neill is starting her own new school, convinced that she shouldn't be there at all. She should be where Craig and St John are. Not that she has met either of them yet. Though meet them she will, and more.
Their lives and hers - and the lives of the entire Nimmo family - become entwined as pre-teens turn to teens, turn to twenties and thirties, turn inevitably to the eff decades and they go about the business of filling the spaces vacated by the generations that went before. It's called growing up, never mind that most of the time it feels like making it up as they go along, and sometimes like fucking up completely.
Glenn Patterson is the author of eight previous novels, the most recent of which, The Mill for Grinding Old People Young, was the 2012 Once City One Book choice for Belfast. He is the cowriter of Good Vibrations (BBC Films/The Works), an award-winning movie based on the life of Belfast punk impresario Terri Hooley. He is currently at work on a novel set in the DeLorean motor plant in the early 1980s; a related screenplay has already been commissioned. He lives in Belfast.