The Tap Dancer Av Andrew Barrow

<p><strong>‘My favourite novel and one I wish I’d written.’ ALAN BENNETT</strong></p><p><em>Winner of the McKitterick Prize for best first novel by an author aged over 40, and the Hawthornden Prize for imaginative literature.</em></p><p>Everyone craves retirement from the Civil Service, don’t they? That time for an ageing patriarch to enjoy the fruits of a well-earned pension and the respect of his family; maybe even to indulge in a love of music halls and metropolitan life. If only people would listen and do as they were told…</p><p>His fourth son William, the long-suffering narrator, is the constant butt of his father’s jokes and victim of his brothers’ indifference. But as death, divorce and other darker dramas follow, father and son slowly establish a strange harmony.</p>