Sunday, October 28th:
I have discovered failure and found that it is like goose grass. It clings still and I cannot shake it off.
2012 is a disastrous year for Sebastian Scattergood, who has recently retired from the pharmaceutical industry after thirty-seven happy and uneventful years as a Health and Safety officer. Despite his eternal optimism, however, all the earmarked projects of his newly earned freedom crumble into dust, each one faithfully recorded, warts and all, in his diary. Building firms go bust on him, landscape gardeners do a runner, and his cultural tours company is sabotaged by a couple of naked German students smoking cannabis on a night walk. It is only when he has been driven into hibernation by a savage attack in the press that salvation finally arrives, in the form of Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Set in a small village in the Lincolnshire Wolds, 'Trying Times for Sebastian Scattergood' is a chronicle of a horrendous year, narrated by an earnest and pompous man who lacks any sense of self-irony. Part disaster diary, part social satire, it is a novel of literary fiction which is both humorous and moving in equal measure.
Publisher: Cranthorpe Millner Publishers
ISBN: 9781803780658
Number of pages: 401
Dimensions: 197 x 132 mm
Have you ever had to cope with elderly parents and felt inadequate? Have you ever had builders walk out on the job (twice) leaving your home open to a wintery world and you cowering inside? Have you fancied going for... More
Stamped with the smells, sounds and sights of deepest Lincolnshire, this book entertains, moves and gently informs in the voice of the tragi-comic Sebastian. A great read.
Humour, heritage, hubris and heart-wrenching hairsplitting combine in this touching and very funny novel. Love the countryside? Find joy in the everyday detail of life? Bemused and amused by the vagaries of the modern... More
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