Flirting at the Funeral is a story about love, money, and lost opportunities, ranging across Europe against a background of financial crisis, terrorism and the power of the super-rich.
At the pool-side, the evening breeze is fragrant with the scent of grilled lobster and designer sun-block. Two German girls in starched white uniforms, buttoned up as tight as barbie dolls, are serving champagne to the guests.
Dave Leaper sips his drink and dreams of death and vengeance. At a clinic in Southern Europe a group of young film-makers are recreating the songs, the slogans and the idealism of the years of revolution, while an old man, mummified by wealth and power, watches them and pays the bills. He pays and pays, missing nothing.
“A sophisticated, deeply mature work, shot through with oodles of lovely writing and shored up by many insights and ideas. There were so many sentences I read with genuine envy, or respect, or simple out-and-out delight, and so many brilliant images. Real, abundant gifts as a writer – this is urbane, serious, but also seriously entertaining writing.”Producer, former BBC Correspondentand award winning author Jon Gower
“Flirting at the Funeral is a philosophical novel in the best sense, beautifully written, as if G.M. Hopkins had turned to prose and lived to see the modern age… a very good novel – the product of a formidable and original mind.”
Ben Shephard Author of: A War of Nerves; After Daybreak; The Long Road Home
