An audio book.
August (33, ginger, 6ft 4) runs a London deli owned by spinster Rose. When he loses himself dancing he feels natural. Elsewhen he feels inadequate. Henri (female) works for him. He fancies her. Jim and his deaf brother Gabriel are August's best friends. His mother Olivia still pops round. She said that his dad Luke died when he was little. He and his mum used to live in a commune, Stonegate House. Cedric (old, writes rude doggerel) is a customer. Leola, a new customer who works opposite in a florists, pops in. He sees Cosmo for the first time in decades, someone who was at the commune and went away with his mother for months, but Cosmo doesn't recognise him. Cosmo's going to become a neighbour. Henri fancies him though she already has a french boyfriend Eve (Yves and Henri speaking French together, and Henri increasingly speaks in French with August). Rose goes on an antarctica tour and meets a man, Salvador. She says that a sun dog is an illusion in antarctica - a fake sun.
August develops a skin condition after fearing that Cosmo might be his father - frost in winter, buds and twigs in summer, then cracks. He tells Cosmo who he is. He says Olivia was chucked out of the commune and that he should ask her about Edward. August has a flashback about her mother being chucked out for sleeping around too much. He and Henri suddenly try sex but she's alarmed by his growths.
He goes to the house of the Chalmins (Luke's parents) in Harrow. They'd chucked out her mother when he was 2 weeks old. Nobody's in. Next time he goes he discovers from the widowed mother that when Olivia was living there with Luke she had an affair with the gardener Edward causing Luke's death somehow.
Yves and Henri break up. Rose's dog disappears. Cosmo asks August to sell stuff on his stall - craft objects. Cosmo dumps some merchanise at August's place. August sees Leola with Cosmo and talks with her after. Neither have been abroad. Both would like to visit antarctica.
The police visit August. Cosmo is a small-time smuggler. He's left the country. Cosmo tries to track down Edward. He finds his brother in Tunbridge Wells. Edward died just when August's skin problems started. August finds Rose's dog locked in a cupboard. He discovers that Rose used to be Ross. He gets a date with Leola. It's autumn - suddenly his hair falls out. Leola's ok with that - they have sex on their first date. He tells his mother (who's been off the scene for months) about Edward.
He returns to Stonegate House, thinking that Edward buried something for him there. He finds a buried, rotten spade. At home he finds that the house plant he bought at Leola's is still alive - the first plant he's not killed. And his hair is regrowing.
The gardening theme is sustained. How does Rose's sex-change fit in? Were Jim and Gabriel worth including? I'm unsure if the title's an allusion to a son (August) and a dog (Rose's). The author adds unnecessary words to the ends of sentences - "Next day snow fell from the sky"; "Her clitoris was just visible between her legs". The reader pronounces "buoys" "booees". I like "When I was with him it's like being in a space cleared by a Atom bomb"; "a fullness as if the world had a swollen lip", "Trees turning their back to him ... as curious and unsure of him as he was of them".
Other reviews
- thebookloversboudoir (I think it’s Roffey’s best.)
- Arifa Akbar (Structured around the seasons, it is a family drama and love story - flecked with magical realism and absorbing on all counts - but best read for the pleasure of sinking into Roffey's lusciously rendered everyday world.)
- Prabha Srishti (On occasions it turns blunt and bold to the extent it makes the reader feel obtrusive for invading the privacy of its characters which stands testimonial to the author’s rich character developing skills. Having said that, much of the development that the side characters see come from the protagonist’s viewpoint and hence is scattered and irregular. It is raw and lost in artful nuances at some places)
