Description - The Songs by Charles Elton
From the bestselling author of Mr Toppit, a Richard & Judy Book Club pick, comes a riotous, darkly comic story of siblings searching for the truth about their musician father – for fans of The Rosie Project, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Humans
Iz Herzl, famed political activist and protest singer, has always said that you should concentrate on the future, not the past. Now aged eighty, a reclusive figure holed up in Muswell Hill, Iz’s refusal to reflect on his life leaves his teenage children, maths wunderkind Rose and her terminally ill brother Huddie, adrift in myth and uncertainty. Retreating into a secret world with Huddie, Rose could not feel more distant from her father.
Iz doesn't talk about his other child, Joseph, a West End songwriter forty years older than Rose and Huddie. A single, disastrous meeting many years earlier set Joseph on a violent path to self-destruction. Now he tries to impose order on his chaotic world through rhyme, transforming traumatic events into snappy showbiz numbers.
As the scattered children of Iz Herzl face darkness and isolation, each searches for answers in the ambiguities at the heart of their father’s life. From the stifling conventions of 1940s Godalming to the desperate cast of a stage flop, Charles Elton unerringly holds up a mirror to Britain. Skilfully weaving the story of an eccentric family across generations, The Songs is an exuberant, hilarious and heart-breaking tale of parenthood and fame, ambition and loneliness, and words and music.
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