This is his debut novel- also available from Galley Beggar Press. It's definitely one of the Press's first releases too, considering how short the list of names of the GBP buddies is at the end of the book.
I've been meaning to read this since I read Beasts of England. Indeed I bought it immediately after finishing that book. Has it been worth the wait?
This one is set more in the real world and is about a revolution in an absolutely horrific old folks home.
Dot is a new resident. She's just about given up on living since her husband contracted dementia and she could no longer look after him. Ruggles is convinced he's a wartime hero from the Boy's Own Adventure books he reads constantly. The other residents are in varying stages of waiting for death. The entire staff are either incompetent, insane, sadistic, or all three.
This is not a nice place and, as you might have guessed, and, if it was real, would be closed in a week. That's probably one of the biggest issues with this book. despite being set in the real world, the setting is unrealistically grim. There's a line in there about it being somehow exempt from inspection to cover that, but it doesn't really hold water.
This was my choice this month for my book group, and it did not go down well in the slightest, with only me and one other finishing it. The fact that I'm the youngest in that group by at least a decade may have something to do with it considering the subject matter.
Things get very gruesome in places, and there are a few extremely graphic sexual scenes. The writing is excellent throughout. but the story is not a pleasant one and doesn't offer much hope at any point. Ruggles's sections are written in the style of the old style Boy's Own Adventures and don't always reference the real world story, leaving the reader to infer what's actually happening. In short, this is a book that requires effort to read and understand, and you need the constitution of a concrete elephant to digest some of the detail.
I enjoyed it throughout, but even for me this is a one and done. I graded it 7/10 at the book group, and I think that's fair. Everyone else there scored it 2 or 3. Whoops.
