William Rees

In times of trouble | 18 January 2018

Both Ireland’s Troubles and the anxieties of a 25-year-old anorexic unfold over a single day in Turning for Home

issue 20 January 2018

‘People live in the space between the realities of their lives and the hopes they have for them,’ muses the octogenarian Robert at the start of Turning for Home, helpfully establishing the novel’s major theme. Little ventriloquised cogitations like this cover Barney Norris’s second novel like fingerprints, giving the game away.

Robert is a newly widowed retired civil servant, who, after a life of patriarchal and political responsibilities, is haunted by his newfound obsolescence.

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