Book Ninety One 2014:

Forsaken by Gerard Lee

How on earth did I miss this when it came out? I am eternally grateful to the author friend of mine who sent a copy my way.

When he’s ten, JJ’s dad climbs up a tree and never comes back. This is the story of what happens next through his mother’s coping, his uncles attempts to fleece them and take their farm and all the way down through how one boy sees and incredible spiral of a dark, empty, pitiless spiral of a story leading to one of the most gothic, disturbing final images I’ve come across in years.

JJ is destined to be a classic character, Gerard Lee’s prose is sometimes beautiful, sometimes very down to earth but always consistently in the voice of one extraordinary protagonist.

Think part The Butcher Boy, part We Have Always Lived In The Castle, part The Wasp Factory but yet all its own book. I’ll be pressing it into people’s hands whenever I get the chance.

One of the best things I’ve read this year.