Rough Music: A Novel

Rough Music: A Novel

by Patrick Gale
Rough Music: A Novel

Rough Music: A Novel

by Patrick Gale

eBook

$4.99 

Available on Compatible NOOK Devices and the free NOOK Apps.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers


Overview

Beautifully written and deeply compassionate, Rough Music is a novel of one family at two defining points in time. Seamlessly alternating between the present day and a summer thirty years past, its twin stories unfold at a cottage along the eastern coast of England.

Will Pagett receives an unexpected gift on his fortieth birthday, two weeks at a perfect beach house in Cornwall. Seeking some distance from the married man with whom he's having an affair, he invites his aging mother and father to share his holiday, knowing the sun and sea will be a welcome change for. But the cottage and the stretch of sand before it seem somehow familiar and memories of a summer long ago begin to surface.

Thirty-two years earlier. A young married couple and their eight year-old son begin two idyllic weeks at a beach house in Cornwall. But the sudden arrival of unknown American relatives has devastating consequences, turning what was to be a moment of reconciliation into an act of betrayal that will cast a lengthy shadow.

As Patrick Gale masterfully unspools these parallel stories, we see their subtle and surprising reflections in each other and discover how the forgotten dramas of childhood are reenacted throughout our lives.

Deftly navigating the terrain between humor and tragedy, Patrick Gale has written an unforgettable novel about the lies that adults tell and the small acts of treason that children can commit. Rough Music gracefully illuminates the merciful tricks of memory and the courage with which we continue to assert our belief in love and happiness.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780307490315
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Publication date: 01/27/2010
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 384
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

Patrick Gale was born in 1962 on the Isle of Wight. He is the author of nine novels, including Tree Surgery for Beginners, The Facts of Life, Little Bits of Baby, and Kansas in August, and a collection of stories, Dangerous Pleasures. He lives in north Cornwall, England.

Read an Excerpt

BLUE HOUSE

“Actually I feel a bit of a fraud being here,” Will told her. “I’m basically a happy man. No. There’s no basically about it. I’m happy. I am a happy man.”

“Good,” she said, crossing her legs and caressing an ankle as if to smooth out a crease she found there. “What makes you say that?”

“That I’m happy?”

She nodded.

“Well.” He uncrossed his legs, sat back in the sofa and peered out of her study window. He saw the waters of the Bross glittering at the edge of Boniface Gardens, two walkers pausing, briefly allied by the gamboling of their dogs. “I imagine you usually see people at their wit’s end. People with depression or insoluble problems.”

“Occasionally. Some people come to me merely because they’ve lost their way.”

He detected a certain sacerdotal smugness in her tone and suspected he hated her. “Well I’m here because a friend bought me a handful of sessions for my birthday. She thinks I need them.”

“Do you mind?”

He shrugged, laughed. “Makes a change from socks and book tokens.”

“But you don’t feel you need to be here.”

“I . . . I know it sounds arrogant but no, I don’t. Not especially. It’s just that it would have been rude not to come, even though she’ll be far too discreet to ask how I get on with you. If I didn’t come, I’d be rejecting her present and I’d hate to do that. I love her.”

“Her being?”

“Harriet. My best friend. She’s like a second sister but I think of her as a friend first and family second.”

“You have more loyalty to friends than family?”

“I didn’t say that. But you know how it is; people move on from family and choose new allies. It’s part of becoming an adult. I feel I’m moving on too. A little late in the day, I suppose.”

“Your best friend’s a woman.”

“Is that unusual?” She said nothing, waiting for him to speak. “I suppose it is,” he went on. “I’m just not a bloke’s bloke. I never have been. I find women more congenial, more evolved. I mean I’m perfectly happy being a man, but I find I have more in common with women.”

“Such as?”

He did hate her. He hated her royally. “The things we laugh at. The things we do with our free time. And, okay, I suppose you’ll want to talk about this—”

“I don’t want to talk about anything you don’t want to talk about.”

“Whatever. We also share sexual interests. I mean we like the same thing.”

“You’re homosexual?”

“I’m gay.” He smiled, determined to charm her, but she was impervious and vouchsafed no more than a wintry smile. “I told you. I’m a happy man.”

“Your sexuality isn’t a problem for you.”

“It never has been. It’s a constant source of delight. Not a day goes by when I don’t thank God. If anything I’m relieved. Especially now my friends are all having children.”

“You never wanted children.”

“Of course. Sometimes. Hats jokes that if she dies I can have hers. But no. The impulse came and went. There are more than enough children in the world and I’m not so obsessed with seeing myself reproduced. Besides, one of my nephews is the spitting image of me, which has taken care of that. I love my own company. I don’t think I’m selfish exactly but I’m self-sufficient.”

“What about settling down? You’re, what, thirty-five?”

“Thank you for that. I turned forty earlier this year. I have settled down. I have a satisfying job, a nice flat. I just happen to have settled down alone.”

“And watching all those girlfriends settled with their partners doesn’t make you want a significant other.”

“Oh. I have one of those. Sort of, I suppose. He’s really why I’m here. I made a promise to him. It was a joke really, but I told Harriet and—”

“Tell me about him.”

He paused. Glanced out at the view again. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s private.”

“Whatever you tell me—”

“—is in strictest confidence. Yes. I know. But we’ve barely met, you’re still a stranger to me and I’d rather not talk about him just now. It’s not a painful situation. He’s a lovely man. He makes me happy. But I didn’t come here to talk about him.”

A slight, attentive raising of her eyebrows asked, So what did you come to talk about?

“Shouldn’t we start with my childhood?” he said. “Isn’t that the usual thing?”

“If you like.”

“I warn you. I wasn’t abused. I wasn’t neglected. I love my parents and I loved my childhood. It was very, very happy.”

“Tell me about it.”

Reading Group Guide

1. How do the three quotations at the beginning of the novel relate
to your understanding of the book's themes and characters?

2. The novel's alternating chapters underscore the contrast between
children's and adults' perspectives on the world. In what other
ways does the novel suggest that children and adults often have
very different realities?

3. Most of Rough Music is set on and around the beach in Cornwall.
How does the beach--the ocean itself, the shoreline, the sand-function in the novel?

4. Memory is at the heart of this novel, both in terms of the Pagetts'
recollections of their summer at Beachcomber and Frances's Alzheimer's.
Do you see any connections between these two kinds of
remembering? What kind of personal issues seem to be at stake in
the suppression and failure of memory?

5. What role do nostalgia and homesickness play in the novel?

6. Prisons and various kinds of imprisonment are recurring themes
in Rough Music. Which characters are most concerned with rules
and boundaries? How do family and marriage seem to confine
certain characters?

7. In what ways does language have a capacity to incriminate the
novel's characters? In what ways does it help to liberate them?

8. When Julian frees Lady Percy on the beach, he says, "Go . . .
Quick. Before they can catch you again." What exactly is he trying
to accomplish by releasing his pet? How does this event reflect
his changing sense of the world?

9. How would you describe the betrayals--both intentional and
otherwise--that occur in Rough Music? Do you think the novel
suggests that atleast some of these betrayals are inevitable?

10. Skip and Julian's new names represent an attempt to begin new
lives--a reflection of Frances's hopeful "Clean slates all round?"
What do you make of this concept and of the particular name
changes?

11. Julian's enrolment into the Barrowcester Choir School is somewhat
mysterious. What do you imagine is behind this dramatic
development? How does Julian's time at the school seem to
shape him?

12. The book plays games with gender roles and with perceived norms
of masculinity and femininity. How do Julian's ideas about his own
sexuality and maleness develop against this background?

13. How would you characterize our expectations for the novel's female
characters? How do they differ from our expectations for
the male characters?

14. What does "Rough Music, " the sculpture, signal or represent for
the novel's characters and for us as readers? Do you think the ti-tle
has another significance?

15. How do you feel about the novel's ending? If you were going to
write an afterword, what would it contain?

Foreword

1. How do the three quotations at the beginning of the novel relate
to your understanding of the book's themes and characters?

2. The novel's alternating chapters underscore the contrast between
children's and adults' perspectives on the world. In what other
ways does the novel suggest that children and adults often have
very different realities?

3. Most of Rough Music is set on and around the beach in Cornwall.
How does the beach—the ocean itself, the shoreline, the sand—
function in the novel?

4. Memory is at the heart of this novel, both in terms of the Pagetts'
recollections of their summer at Beachcomber and Frances's Alzheimer's.
Do you see any connections between these two kinds of
remembering? What kind of personal issues seem to be at stake in
the suppression and failure of memory?

5. What role do nostalgia and homesickness play in the novel?

6. Prisons and various kinds of imprisonment are recurring themes
in Rough Music. Which characters are most concerned with rules
and boundaries? How do family and marriage seem to confine
certain characters?

7. In what ways does language have a capacity to incriminate the
novel's characters? In what ways does it help to liberate them?

8. When Julian frees Lady Percy on the beach, he says, "Go . . .
Quick. Before they can catch you again." What exactly is he trying
to accomplish by releasing his pet? How does this event reflect
his changing sense of the world?

9. How would you describe the betrayals—both intentional and
otherwise—that occur in Rough Music? Do you think thenovel
suggests that at least some of these betrayals are inevitable?

10. Skip and Julian's new names represent an attempt to begin new
lives—a reflection of Frances's hopeful "Clean slates all round?"
What do you make of this concept and of the particular name
changes?

11. Julian's enrolment into the Barrowcester Choir School is somewhat
mysterious. What do you imagine is behind this dramatic
development? How does Julian's time at the school seem to
shape him?

12. The book plays games with gender roles and with perceived norms
of masculinity and femininity. How do Julian's ideas about his own
sexuality and maleness develop against this background?

13. How would you characterize our expectations for the novel's female
characters? How do they differ from our expectations for
the male characters?

14. What does "Rough Music," the sculpture, signal or represent for
the novel's characters and for us as readers? Do you think the ti-tle
has another significance?

15. How do you feel about the novel's ending? If you were going to
write an afterword, what would it contain?

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews