Dominic Pattison’s life is one of level contentment. His marriage has proved happy and durable; his business is successful. And then Sam Williams, builder and ex-squaddie, enters his life. Sam claims to be his son.
Yet is Sam who he says he is? After almost thirty years, Dominic can remember little of his affair with Sam’s mother. His instinct is to recoil from this volatile and perhaps dangerous stranger. Sam, however, refuses to be dismissed.
With its deft switches of sympathy between menaced ‘father’ and rebuffed ‘son’, Buckley’s novel is both a thriller and a subtle exploration of the intricacies of memory.
