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This is a really good, absorbing drama about a family in crisis and in particular tells the story of George who, at the age of 57, suddenly faces the fact that he is not going to live forever upon the discovery of a lesion on his hip. Wife Jean is sleeping with an old work colleague of his. Daughter Katie is preparing her wedding to Ray, a man who is universally disliked by her family and to be honest, she is not sure whether she is marrying him for the right reasons. Finally, son Jamie is facing a dilemma � he wants to bring his partner Tony to the wedding, but he fears his family are not ready for that.

There is a thread of black humour running through the book but I did feel it was more moving and emotional than funny as George’s depression first crept up and then engulfed him. It all felt so real, as if it was happening to somebody I knew and these sections in particular were beautifully written. The whole family, in fact, felt frighteningly real to me, and I found myself nodding my head so many times throughout the book at things they said.

They are all in crisis in one way or another, and as each short and sharp chapter is told through alternate viewpoints, I really got a good understanding about what was going through everyone’s thoughts. They are all brutally honest with themselves but the sadness is that none of them speak to each other about the things that matter.

It was a book that really grabbed me and held my attention during the build up to the wedding but there were one or two things I wasn’t too sure about. George is 57 and I am in my early 50s so I could really understand his sudden fear when he realised that he is not immortal, but he didn’t “feel� like someone in his fifties. I never saw him, or Jean, as contemporaries as mine as they felt as if they were from a different generation. I did feel the ending was a little “too� upbeat, the cloud over George’s head just seemed to blow away a little too easily in relation to the pain he suffered throughout the book. I couldn’t help thinking “oh if only depression could be solved that easily in real life�. On the whole though, this is a good entertaining read that delivers some very real home truths with very realistic characters that I thoroughly enjoyed. Yes, there are those bits that I wasn’t sure about, but they were far outweighed by the good.