by Tim Pears
The passage of time renders all things strange, corrupted, enticing, in memories in one’s mind as with the objects of material existence. It’s natural that that period of one’s life, launching out of childhood, on the threshold of adulthood, of – as one imagines it to be – true life; it’s natural that this period of hope, and of potential, should be looked back upon as one of innocence. I understand this. Now, of course, with what has happened since, we’re well aware that although the seeds of corruption had already been sown all around us, and were growing in this world, this planet, this mind of God, it really was such a time. That Christmas of fifty years ago.
My children blame their parents – as I did mine, and no doubt they did theirs, and so on, back to time immemorial. But the fact is, Grandma was right: What have I done? Did I do enough? Clearly not. None of us did, did we? It would have been better to have taken a chance – for the thinkers to turn into doers – to have betrayed ourselves and become men of action, flawed heroes of our own lives. Who knows what might have happened?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to my mother and stepfather, Jill and Hugh Scurfield, in whose part of the world, in south Shropshire, this novel is set; and with apologies to them and the rest of my family for the fact that all the characters in this novel are fictitious.
A particularly interesting and helpful book was Shropshire Hill Country by Vincent Waite.
Many thanks to Jason Arthur at William Heinemann, and Victoria Hobbs at A. M. Heath.
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Epub ISBN 9781409039242
Version 1.0
Published by William Heinemann 2011
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Copyright © Tim Pears 2011
Tim Pears has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
First published in Great Britain in 2011 by William Heinemann
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780434020812