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£8.99
Published
20 Jan 2015
PB
9781910400036
Ebook
9781908699633
Press Release
Coming soon.
 

Ten-year-old Theo lives with his grandfather and a minder in a vast, decrepit Long Island mansion said to have inspired The Great Gatsby. His English father, a world famous rock musician, spends most of the year away on tour. His mother, beautiful and fragile, is in and out of his life amid bouts of rehab.

Alone for much of the time, Theo takes refuge in his attic bedroom, among his collection of live butterfly pupas and the tales of piratical adventure that fire his imagination.

Then, a fax arrives: ‘Reef the mainsail.’ It seems Theo’s father is coming home to record a new album, and he’s planning to stay the whole summer. Along with the rest of the band, managers, PR people, agents, and countless hangers-on good, bad and downright ugly…

Over two life-changing days, Theo captures the mind and voice of a ten-year-old boy at the far edge of innocence. At once a tender coming-of-age story and an exploration of the radioactive effects of the rich and famous on those who love them, it peels away the image to look into the dark heart of fame and fortune.

Old Street Publishing Theo

Ten-year-old Theo lives with his grandfather and a minder in a vast, decrepit Long Island mansion said to have inspired The Great Gatsby. His English father, a world famous rock musician, spends most of the year away on tour. His mother, beautiful and fragile, is in and out of his life amid bouts of rehab.

Alone for much of the time, Theo takes refuge in his attic bedroom, among his collection of live butterfly pupas and the tales of piratical adventure that fire his imagination.

Then, a fax arrives: ‘Reef the mainsail.’ It seems Theo’s father is coming home to record a new album, and he’s planning to stay the whole summer. Along with the rest of the band, managers, PR people, agents, and countless hangers-on good, bad and downright ugly…

Over two life-changing days, Theo captures the mind and voice of a ten-year-old boy at the far edge of innocence. At once a tender coming-of-age story and an exploration of the radioactive effects of the rich and famous on those who love them, it peels away the image to look into the dark heart of fame and fortune.

 8.99
 
 

"Anybody who is interested in rock music, great writing or remembering what it felt like to be ten needs to read … this rare thing: a properly excellent novel about rock and roll"
—Tom Cox

 
 
  • "It's the mid-to-late 1980s, and for anyone who knows the history of rock superstardom, it's hard not to map _Theo_'s world on to one of the most notoriously dysfunctional groups on the planet … Taylor's novel is a sustained howl of confusion and alienation as Theo runs up and down, in and out of the gothic Long Island pile where his father has left him with his grandfather and a useless minder. The blurring of inside and outside speaks of Theo's literal lack of boundaries, and when the big star himself turns up with a large, hedonistic entourage, the taking down of his flimsy inner walls is brutally completed."
    —Guardian
  • "Theo has all kinds of echoes from rock's catalogue of excesses … the author's genius is to refract them through the innocent eyes of a ten-year-old boy, which he does beautifully. This is a terrific book that transcends its subject matter to become a haunting meditation on childhood."
    —Bookseller Crow
  • "Taylor upends our assumptions about naiveté and wisdom, obscurity and fame, past and present, curses and blessings. Theo is a dream of a book"
    —Jillian Lauren
 
 

Ed Taylor teaches literature and writing at Buffalo State College. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee and his story "Grendel" was selected as a "Notable Read" in Dave Eggers’s anthology Best American Non-required Reading. His work appears in a variety of U.S. and U.K. periodicals and anthologies.