The Madness of Grief

A well-written, richly complicated, and deeply engaging coming-of-age tale.
Kirkus Reviews (starred review) July 1969. While men are walking on the moon, life in London for sixteen-year-old Jane takes unexpected turns. On the point of falling in love with her best friend Karl, she discovers that there’s more to her father’s spectacular girlfriend than at first meets the eye. In the sweltering heat of a fast-moving evening, other revelations quickly follow, reconciling Jane with her father but also reopening wounds from the past, laying bare raw emotions kept suppressed for too long. And as the evening draws to a close, the night’s drama has only just begun, unfolding in a sequence of violent events that threaten to have lasting repercussions for Jane and the people she loves… Lightened by music and humor and darkened by Kafkaesque dreams, with magic tricks, sexuality, and family secrets all playing a prominent part, The Madness of Grief is a coming-of-age tale of friendship, betrayal and loss. A rollicking good read in which profound truths about the human psyche, about memory and betrayal, about love and forgiveness, emerge with such finesse that the reader is carried along hardly aware of the complexity and depth of the novel.
The BookLife Prize 2021 – Overall Score 10 out of 10 Named to Kirkus Reviews’ BEST BOOKS OF 2018 Contains Mature Themes