Rough Music Paperback – Import, 14 May 2009

Patrick Gale . Harper Perennial . English

A gripping and unnerving story of a family’s secrets and lies, from the bestselling author of ‘Notes from an Exhibition’ and ‘A Perfectly Good Man’. Julian as a small boy is taken on the perfect Cornish holiday. When glamorous American cousins unexpectedly swell the party, however, emotions run high and events spiral out of control. Though he has been brought up in the forbidding shadow of the prison his father runs, though his parents are neither as normal nor as happy as he supposes, Julian’s world view is the sunnily selfish, accepting one of boyhood. It is only when he becomes a man – seemingly at ease with love, with his sexuality, with his ghosts – that the traumatic effects of that distant summer rise up to challenge his defiant assertion that he is happy and always has been.

Categories: Fiction

About the Author

Patrick Gale is a cellist, gardener and patron of North Cornwall Book Festival, Penzance LitFest and the Charles Causley Trust. He lives with his husband, the farmer and sculptor, Aidan Hicks (aidanhicks dot com), on their farm at Land’s End. In addition to his latest, Love Lane, published on March 26, 2026, his eighteen novels include Mother's Boy (2022), Take Nothing With You (2018), which was his fourth Sunday Times bestseller, Rough Music (2000), Notes From an Exhibition (2007), A Perfectly Good Man (2012) and A Place Called Winter (2015). In 2017 his two part drama Man in an Orange Shirt was screened by BBC2 as part of the Gay Britannia season. Continuing to be broadcast regularly around the world, this won the International Emmy for best miniseries and is now in development as a musical. He is working on a television adaptation of A Place Called Winter and a stage version of Take Nothing With You. Extracts from the BBC documentary All Families Have Secrets – the Narrative Art of Patrick Gale can be seen on his website galewarning dot org. The garden at Trevilley was featured on Gardener's World and is opened under the National Garden Scheme every June.

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