Author(s): Gerard Woodward

Fiction

You don't need to have read Gerard Woodward's previous two novels, "August" and "I'll Go To Bed At Noon", to fall in love with this one, and its wonderfully fallible hero, Aldous Jones. Having hovered at the periphery of the previous books, Aldous comes into his own in the heartbreakingly funny story of an old man whose wife has died, whose children have left home, but who still wants to live life to the full. Left with an empty house and cupboards full of hoarded odds and ends that seem to have nothing to do with him, Aldous is tempted to spend the whole day sitting in his chair in the kitchen. But with admirable determination, he resolutely resumes old pastimes until, one day, wandering London with his bus pass, he is surprised to find in the National Gallery a painting that holds him completely in its spell.