The book opens with Ritchie Shephard, ageing rock star now tv talent show judge, as he walks through his tv studio surrounded by rumours an affair with a underage girl on his show - untrue as it happens in this case. He himself is reflecting on the extramarital sex he is having with previous contestant Nicole. In Ritchie Meek gives us a narcissistic self obsessed seedy sterotype we all believe we know so well from the endless flow of tv shows of this kind, the man as morally bankrupt as the 'talent' on such shows. His wife Karin, once also his partner in their band the Lazygods, and their children Dan and Ruby immediately attain a kind of martyr halo. So far so ordinary. However, nothing is ever that simple and Meek deftly leads us through a portrait of an extended family and away from sterotype to understanding.
Ritchie's sister Bec appears at first to be the light to Ritchie's dark. A researcher on malaria, striving to find a cure for the disease that maims countless lives in the developing world, she has infected herself with a parasite that gives immunity but brings on blindness. Bec's mentor and boss is Harry, estranged from his evangelist son but much closer to his nephew Alex who he treats as the son he wished he had had. Alex is a scientist working on the architecture of the human cell and he follows Bec's research with a gentle obsessiveness.
Alex's marriage to Maria is dissolving under the strain of infertility. Meek draws the characters are drawn together as Bec and Alex's lives finally intersect, Ritchie's construction of deceit begins to fall apart and Alex's younger brother Dougie and Bec's former lover newspaper editor Val are thrown into the mix. Halos and horns alike begin to slip with the pain of betrayal and misunderstandings.
Meek has given us a meticulous work which is so well crafted stereotypes are undermined the moment they are presented, and I will never look at tv science programmes in the same way again.
Ritchie's sister Bec appears at first to be the light to Ritchie's dark. A researcher on malaria, striving to find a cure for the disease that maims countless lives in the developing world, she has infected herself with a parasite that gives immunity but brings on blindness. Bec's mentor and boss is Harry, estranged from his evangelist son but much closer to his nephew Alex who he treats as the son he wished he had had. Alex is a scientist working on the architecture of the human cell and he follows Bec's research with a gentle obsessiveness.
Alex's marriage to Maria is dissolving under the strain of infertility. Meek draws the characters are drawn together as Bec and Alex's lives finally intersect, Ritchie's construction of deceit begins to fall apart and Alex's younger brother Dougie and Bec's former lover newspaper editor Val are thrown into the mix. Halos and horns alike begin to slip with the pain of betrayal and misunderstandings.
Meek has given us a meticulous work which is so well crafted stereotypes are undermined the moment they are presented, and I will never look at tv science programmes in the same way again.
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