Condition: Good. Tanning of edges.

226 Pages, Paperback  20x13x2cm

Poet John Carson lives in a crumbling seaside house with his sister and niece. He writes feverishly to the woman who has abandoned him as a lover, yet kept him as a correspondent.

Beautiful, generous . . . and married. The occasional fleeting encounter between the lovers fuels John the writer, but leaves John the man close to despair. To keep his feelings in check, John loses himself in the details of his home life – the never-ending chores of domesticity, his niece’s mysterious eating disorder and the menu he is attempting to write in rhyming couplets save him from himself, most of the time.

There is also the eccentric old woman who lives in their garden cottage and the poetry journal that he has just been appointed to edit. Will John and Theresa find a way to overcome everything that holds them apart or is, in fact, a state of permanent longing really what poets need?

About Author

South African poet and writer Finuala Dowling’s books include the poetry collections I Flying (winner of the Ingrid Jonker Prize), Doo-wop Girls of the Universe (joint winner of the Sanlam Prize for poetry) and Notes from the Demetia Ward (winner of the Olive Schreiner Prize). Her novel Home-making for the Down-at-heart won the 2012 M-Net Prize and The Fetch won the 2016 Herman Charles Bosman prize for English fiction. She lives in Cape Town.

Her first novel was What Poets Need, followed by Flyleaf. Her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in several anthologies.