The story of a family and the peeling away of their exterior skins slowly revealing the inner truths. It’s wise, drily humorous, deeply engaging and very satisfying. I’ve always loved Dewar’s work, and this, a larger canvas than norm for her, is definitely one of her best. Highly recommended.
Compulsively neat, obsessively organised, Lily is a writer who writes about writers. When she is asked to contribute to a book on lost icons, she visits Rita Boothe – photographer, journalist and wit – who took LSD when she was forty and never lived up to her promise. Rita shows Lily some of her photographs, including one of a beautiful, sexy creature drinking Jack Daniels in a white limousine. It is Mattie, Lily’s mother. Lily stares in wonder and with envy – she wishes she could live with such abandon. But Mattie is no longer the woman in the limo, and she and Lily’s father live in a neglected house with their neglected marriage. Lily and her siblings want to mend their parents’ rift, but Marie’s husband has walked out, and Rory avoids coming home altogether. Unless something happens, the family's going to fade away. But something is about to happen...
Isla Dewar was born in Edinburgh. She wrote articles for magazines and newspapers for many years before she wrote her first novel, Keeping Up with Magda, in 1995. She lives in Fife with her husband, a cartoonist; they have two sons.
