Where Are the Kings

A twelve-year-old boy races down a hill on his bike, chasing his mother's car before it reaches the lake. What follows cannot be undone, and Jack must cross the bewildering ground between boyhood and manhood without the person who kept him steady.

He is not alone, though. Around him crowds an extended family: a ferociously loving Nana, a Grandad given to sudden rage, the earthy uncles Haulie and Theo with their lessons in being a man, the resentful JJ, and his aunt Rose, whose presence unsettles everything in his changing body. Donal Ryan, winner of the Orwell Prize for Fiction, writes about grief, family secrets and adolescence with rare tenderness. This is a novel for anyone who remembers how lonely it can be to grow up inside a crowded, loving, difficult family.