Collected Novels of Patrick Gale

In both novels presented in this collection, Gale explores the complex dynamics of family with dead-on observation and generous compassion. A Sweet Obscurity: Dido, a nine-year-old orphan, lives with her aunt Eliza, who adopted the girl after her mother died. A depressed musicologist unable to balance her brilliant academic career with motherhood, Eliza ruined her marriage with an affair. Her estranged husband, Giles, is an opera singer whose girlfriend, Julia, uncovers a shocking secret while concealing one of her own. As Dido shuttles between Eliza's squalid flat and Giles's elegant townhouse, she acts as both tactful diplomat and insightful analyst to the adults who act like children. Until something happens that powerfully impacts her young life. The Cat Sanctuary: Deborah Curtis's husband, a diplomat in an African principality, was killed by a car bomb, and months later she is still recovering from the assassination. Her estranged sister Judith, an author who lives with her American lover, Joanna, in Cornwall, insists Deborah come to her farmhouse to grieve in peace. But unresolved wounds between the sisters bleed into the present, and a history of abuse comes to light. Forced to confront painful memories, the women's secrets and lies collide in a shattering climax.

Patrick Gale is able to find the comic irony as well as the all-too-human drama in our foibles. In his first three novels, collected here, he mines a rich vein of comedy in characters such as a playwright who reinvents herself, a teenage violin prodigy eager to meet the man of his dreams, a lesbian police inspector rediscovering her libido, and a teacher who surprises himself with an irrepressible paternal instinct. Ease: An award-winning but world-weary playwright, Domina Tey takes on a fake name and a bedsit in Bayswater, then one of London's seedier districts, to find her muse again. Soon she finds herself getting involved with her fellow tenants: a wannabe actress, a gay Frenchman, and a devout member of the local Greek Orthodox Church. They show Domina a side of life she's never seen before, and she learns that before she can start writing again, she will have to live. The Aerodynamics of Pork: Gale's debut novel follows two parallel love stories that ultimately intersect in a surprising way. Fifteen-year-old violin prodigy Seth Peake is secretly attracted to men and looking for romance at a summer music festival in Cornwall, and closeted lesbian police inspector Maude Faithe is trying to solve a mysterious series of burglaries that target astrologists in London, even as she engages in her own star-crossed infatuation. Kansas in August: Stood up by his lover, Rufus, on his birthday, unhappy English teacher Hilary Metcalfe discovers a frightened, abandoned baby boy in a London tube station. Drunk and lonely, Hilary brings the baby home to his Shepherd's Bush flat, and soon finds he cannot live without the child. As Rufus falls into a romantic encounter with, of all people, Hilary's sister, the three are caught in a bizarre love triangle-with a baby in the middle.

In the three novels collected here, the author of the international bestseller Notes from an Exhibition explores the complexities and ironies of men who have removed themselves from society and painful situations, only to find there's no escaping their inner turmoil as they follow individual journeys of growth. Little Bits of Baby: Robin retreated to a remote island monastery after his childhood playmate, Candida, became engaged to Jake, their irresistibly sexy mutual friend. Now Candida is a mother, and she wants her long-lost friend to be the child's godfather. When he returns to London after his five-year exile, Robin finds the city overwhelming and unfamiliar, but he must fight through his feelings if he is to conclude the unfinished business that originally caused him to flee, and take his place in the world once again. Facing the Tank: For American academic Evan Kirby, the English city of Barrowcester-pronounced "Brewster"-is a welcome escape from the US and his brutal divorce. A historian of angels and demons, he has come to explore the cathedral library, but he will find there are no angels in this peculiar little village. From the agnostic bishop and his cannabis cookie–addicted mother to the sex-mad cardinal and the schoolboy with a very unusual relationship with his spaniel, every Barrower has a secret, each more shocking than the last. Tree Surgery for Beginners: Lawrence Frost is forced into a journey of self-searching after being accused of killing his wife. Gale compassionately chronicles Frost's pilgrimage to the Caribbean and eventually to the redwoods of northern California.