Join Patrick Gale to talk about our June Book of the Month, A PERFECTLY GOOD MAN, TONIGHT, Weds 27 June 9-10pm

[TillyBookClub]

Patrick Gale is fast becoming a National Treasure. Our June choice, A PERFECTLY GOOD MAN, is his seventeenth book. That alone deserves some kind of gong from the Queen. But it is also his particular style of quiet, intelligent, clear and humorous writing that makes him a very British talent. You always feel as if you know his characters, that they were in your local Post Office just this morning, and you recognize their human frailty and tangled emotions.

Barnaby Johnson, the hero of this month's book, is a priest in a small West Cornwall parish. Each chapter is a snapshot of different people in the parish, at different times of their life, all of whom are connected to Barnaby. Slowly and deliciously, the story unfolds like backwards origami, with secrets and triumphs and betrayals opening out in sequence.

A novel that makes you reflect on many issues - faith, marriage, adoption, mental illness - but most of all, shows you humanity in all its complex, crazy mixed-up wonderfulness.

The book of the month page with more detail about A PERFECTLY GOOD MAN and our giveaway of 50 free copies of Patrick's book will go live tomorrow (Thursday 31 May) at 10am. We'll close the giveaway after 24 hours and pick 50 names randomly, and we'll email you to let you know if your name was chosen within 48 hours.

And if you're not lucky enough to bag one of those, you can get your Kindle edition or your paperback here

We are delighted that Patrick will be joining us to chat about A PERFECTLY GOOD MAN, his writing life and all his previous books, on Wednesday 27 June, 9-10pm. We'll be discussing the book throughout the month so don't forget to put your thoughts and questions up here before the chat.

Hope you can join us...

[Belo]

I've just got my 2nd copy. If anybody wants it for the cost of postage PM me and I'll post it on.

Also, in the same box, I received two copies of a picture book by Oliver Jeffies. What do I do with them? Do I need to return them?

[Hullygully]

I've finished. I retract my earlier Jodi Picoult remark made after page 10 or something.

I think the current trend for piecemeal stories is interesting for sliding perspectives, different connections and points of view, and admire it technically for the jigsaw nature, but I am left as usual with a feeling of curious bloodlessness. While definitely gripped by the story, I didn't actually feel engaged with, or care about, any of the characters, just wanted to know how it would all come out.

What do you think, Patrick? Which of the characters (if any) did you see as the hero/es? What were we (if anything) supposed to feel about Barnaby? I felt I had no grip on or understanding of who he was at all. I can see the glimpse of an explanation for his religion given at the end, but nothing as to his feelings, for Dot, or anyone else. Does that even matter?

Likewise, I am not convinced by how Modest travelled from A to B and became who he was, nor Phuc. Is it the "make the reader do some work and fill in the gaps" stuff?

Those are my questions, but let them not detract from the fact that I did enjoy the story and thought it very well constructed.

[Hullygully]

ps I do want to say more (you'll be sorry to hear), but don't want to risk spoilers so will wait.

[Hullygully]

If that is all covered in the interview linked to above, apols. I can't listen to it as my computer is sulking and doing the silent treatment.

[gazzalw]

Finished it today and not sure what to think. I definitely think that Barnaby hid his emotions behind his vicar persona! I admired him on one level but also felt like he'd been a bit of a coward to those who loved him and to whom he needed to show some humility and compassion.

I'm not sure I would have necessarily said that Modest came across as a bad person until his initial crime but boy did he become the most unattractive and unappealing man ever - A Uriah Heap for the 21st Century!

It was an unusual book in that there was not a lot of black and white in terms of good people getting good outcomes and bad people getting bad ones...I feel somewhat confused and think I need to sleep on it tonight to get some perspective!

Passing on to DW to read too!

[TillyBookClub]

I've been listening to Patrick's interview (that Gerry linked) where he talks about needing to push himself with 'creative discomfort' and also about his novels getting darker each time. And I didn't realise that this book was intended as a male companion piece to Notes From an Exhibition (did anyone else pick up on this?). Definitely worth a listen if you haven't already.

We're ready for your advance questions: put them up here and I'll forward to Patrick on Monday.

Hully, you already get gold star for first question posted...

gazzalw, interesting about the 'coward' comment. I felt a bit like that too.

Belo, I think the Oliver Jeffers must be a gift from 4th Estate. I reckon you hold onto them/put them in your present drawer/raffle them at the village fete...

[ripsishere]

I am only halfway through it. I have a second copy now if anyone wants it. If not, I'll put it into the school tombola.

[gazzalw]

Hi Patrick, I note you were brought up in prison environments with your father having been a prison governor. I note too that Patrick McGrath had a father who was a doctor at Broadmoor Hospital. Do you feel there are any parallels in the way you two write or do you see any similar themes in your works?

I got a real feel of personal, emotional claustrophobia amongst many of the characters in A Perfectly Good Man - is this a recurring theme of your novels (sorry I haven't read any other but intend to do so now) and is this influenced by the oppressive, contained environment in which you were brought up as a child/adolescent?

[NoraHelmer]

I hadn't realised that this novel was intended as a companion to Notes from an Exhibition, which I have also read, but did notice several characters from that novel crop up in this one too.

My question for Patrick is based purely on having read these two novels (will be reading more of them). You obviously know Cornwall very well, in particular the area surrounding Penzance - do you feel that Cornwall (the places and people) is integral to your novels? Or do you think that you could have written the same novel setting it elsewhere? Reading it I felt the strong pull of the close-knit community that notices an outsider and isn't always welcoming to them. (I think this could have applied to last month's book, Night Waking, too.)

I was glad Modest Carlsson got his comeuppance, of a sort, at the end. What a thoroughly unpleasant character.

[TillyBookClub]

A quick reminder to put advance q's here and I'll be forwarding to Patrick tonight...

[southlondonlady]

I've just finished the book and enjoyed it. I'm not sure what to make of the ending though, the wedding scene is lovely in some ways but I kept thinking, there are still these secrets, so the happiness isn't built on strong foundations. I felt for Carrie particularly, having never known about Lenny.

So my question for Patrick - did you write the ending to be happy, sad or otherwise?

[Geeklette]

I've delayed posting my question up until now because I normally like to give a discussion book at least two readings, but unfortunately time's been against me so my thoughts are based just on my original read-through.

I didn't find Barnaby a coward, as such, but I did very much get the impression that he was a spectator to his own life. I'm not sure if this was so much because of Barnaby himself, or due to the way the book was written in a series of vignettes. I felt this disengaged me from the characters slightly, in a way that a more narrative series of events might not.

My question to Patrick is about Dorothy/Dot, and covers a point that I had intended to pick up on during a second read of the book. My impression was that Dorothy was a well-rounded, engaging chacater with a lot to contribute to the story, and that this changed completely after her last miscarriage. I felt, in a way, that she was 'abandoned' both by Barnaby and Patrick (the changing of her name to something she didn't like, the comments about her putting on weight that she never bothered getting rid of, the lack of inclusion in the story until, almost as an afterthought, her final encounter with Modest in the church).

Was it Patrick's intention to present Dorothy/Dot as two separate characters? What was Patrick's motivation for switching from having a vibrant sidekick for Barnaby, to having a matronly wife as wallpaper?

[Geeklette]

chacater? Character!

[BiscuitNibbler]

Not quite finished yet, but have to say that the misogyny that overwhelmed Notes From An Exhibition was much more subtle in this book, but still came through strongly in the way the Dorothy character was treated.

Apart from that, I find books written in this way, just showing glimpses of the characters, always seem quite lazy, as though we're just reading a draft of the final story. Why is this becoming so popular with modern authors?

[DowagersHump]

I haven't finished the book I'm afraid but a more general question - I've noticed that religion (or faith or lack of) is a recurring theme in your novels. I wondered why that was. It's entirely outside my own experience so I find it fascinating

[blubberguts]

Patrick, why does Phuc dislike his parents so much?

[NoraHelmer]

I wondered about that too, blubberguts. I came to the conclusion that he was angry because he knew nothing about his Vietnamese heritage, they had unwittingly removed the only connection he had to his birth mother by renaming him and trying to make him wholly Cornish. Also, he must have sensed that Dorothy didn't love him. He didn't know about his father's affair with Nuala, unless we are to assume that he had found out somehow?

[Hullygully]

Maybe because it was idea/ theme/plot driven? So then the characters evolve to fit? eg Phuc, Modest as extreme examples of the alienation from their own lives that afflicts all the characters?

[Hullygully]

I think as well there is a tension with writing stuff as it really is eg people are conflicted, alienated, cowardly, ambivalent, amoral etc and simultaneously fulfilling the needs of fiction for the majority of readers: engagement, caring and warmth.

Do we read fiction for "real" life?

[gazzalw]

Highbrow ideas there Hullygully - are you an English graduate? Very impressed!

Another question for me is that as a bloke I feel the male characters are a lot more shaded than the female ones - is that purposeful or just because as a man yourself you are more easily able to portray male angst, moral ambiguity etc...?

[Hullygully]

[gazzalw]

!

[Pendeen]

Well I suppose, bearing in mind the book's setting I had better join in if only to help with accuracy!

[aristocat]

Well, my first comment is that this was A Perfectly Good Read

I enjoyed this charming book and loved the chapter idea for each character at a certain stage in their lives. The descriptions of Cornwall were lovely and I thoroughly warmed to Barnaby and felt that his character and personality were convincing.

This book was a joy to read, thank you. I shall look forward to reading more of your work.

[MaryAnnSingleton]

I'm probably going to miss this but wanted to say that I really liked A Perfectly Good Man and love Notes From An Exhibition so it was great to have Morwenna and her father reappearing. I read NFAE first on a beach in Suffolk,which is probably very different from Cornwall but I always associate it with Suffolk,particularly as we came across Barbara Hepworth sculptures at Snape.
I chose it for bookgroup to read and it went down extremely well - the ladies were a bit taken aback by a previous choice of mine which was Friendly Fires - the cottaging was a bit alarming for them (they are gentille country ladies).
Anyway, I long for your next book - is there something in the pipeline ?