The sensational new novel from the highly-acclaimed author of Dreamland
She had a plan for everything except him...
When a desperate worker throws himself off a balcony, it is Elle who has handle the fallout. Comms director for a tech start-up firm called Gigr, which finds casual employment for an increasingly wide range of workers and professionals, it is her job to anticipate and plan for every scenario.
But lately events have started to spin out of her control.
In parliament the political temperature is getting as hot as the weather on the streets outside. If Elle is to ensure her company's smooth path towards a stock market floatation – a floatation that will provide her and her family with the financial security they so desperately need – she must be prepared to bend to the will of the new extremists in government.
In Elle's personal life, things are hardly less complicated.
On an evening so hot that London's pavements seem to melt, she meets Ed at a house party and immediately the conversation flows. Each exchange feels like an new adventure. It's inevitable that they fall in love.
But Elle has dated only women for as long as she can remember and Ed is a writer billed as 'the great gay novelist of our times.'
Can the unexpected attraction Ed and Elle feel for each other last when it presents such a profound challenge to their identity?
And what happens when their sense of self collapses alongside the world around them?
Set over the course of an historic year, My Only Boy is both a once-in-a-lifetime love story and an uncompromising state-of-the-nation thriller that asks universal questions about the compromises we are prepared to make and the lengths to which we are prepared to go obtain the things we desire most.
Praise for Dreamland
'A beautiful book: thought-provoking, eerily prescient and very witty.' Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half
'Water courses through its pages, as rising sea levels heighten inequalities, buoy populist politicians and wash away every certainty of civilisation. But there's also the novel's prose – its liquid grace and glinting sparkle – and the sheer irresistibility of a narrative that sweeps along with a force that feels tidal in its pull.' Observer
'She vividly captures the balance between ferocity and vulnerability as the two girls explore their burgeoning desire; one minute they're greedy for each other, the next they're proceeding more gingerly. Theirs is a great first love, blazing bright and furious amid the poverty and the pain, the perfect counterweight that's needed to make the novel sing. Dreamland brings us face-to-face with much of what we're on the threshold of losing; nevertheless, it manages to convince us that its characters have everything still to live for.' Guardian