Synopses & Reviews
Beautifully written and deeply compassionate, Rough Music is a novel of one family at two defining points in time. Seamlessly alternating between the present day and a summer thirty years past, its twin stories unfold at a cottage along the eastern coast of England.
Will Pagett receives an unexpected gift on his fortieth birthday, two weeks at a perfect beach house in Cornwall. Seeking some distance from the married man with whom he's having an affair, he invites his aging mother and father to share his holiday, knowing the sun and sea will be a welcome change for. But the cottage and the stretch of sand before it seem somehow familiar and memories of a summer long ago begin to surface.
Thirty-two years earlier. A young married couple and their eight year-old son begin two idyllic weeks at a beach house in Cornwall. But the sudden arrival of unknown American relatives has devastating consequences, turning what was to be a moment of reconciliation into an act of betrayal that will cast a lengthy shadow.
As Patrick Gale masterfully unspools these parallel stories, we see their subtle and surprising reflections in each other and discover how the forgotten dramas of childhood are reenacted throughout our lives.
Deftly navigating the terrain between humor and tragedy, Patrick Gale has written an unforgettable novel about the lies that adults tell and the small acts of treason that children can commit. Rough Music gracefully illuminates the merciful tricks of memory and the courage with which we continue to assert our belief in love and happiness.
From the Hardcover edition.
Review
"Cleverly structured and sophisticated in its treatment of time, his latest novel is an alternately sweet, touching and somber tale of a mildly dysfunctional English family....The domestic details and undercurrents of an English seaside holiday in the vastly differing social climates of the 1950s and '80s are stunningly caught, and the dialogue, whether parent-placid or suddenly gay-quarrelsome, is spot on. The conclusion, for both Will and his parents, brings a deserved glow of quiet reconciliation." Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
Beautifully written and deeply compassionate,
Rough Music is a novel of one family at two defining points in time. Seamlessly alternating between the present day and a summer thirty years past, its twin stories unfold at a cottage along the eastern coast of England.
Will Pagett receives an unexpected gift on his fortieth birthday, two weeks at a perfect beach house in Cornwall. Seeking some distance from the married man with whom he's having an affair, he invites his aging mother and father to share his holiday, knowing the sun and sea will be a welcome change for. But the cottage and the stretch of sand before it seem somehow familiar and memories of a summer long ago begin to surface.
Thirty-two years earlier. A young married couple and their eight year-old son begin two idyllic weeks at a beach house in Cornwall. But the sudden arrival of unknown American relatives has devastating consequences, turning what was to be a moment of reconciliation into an act of betrayal that will cast a lengthy shadow.
As Patrick Gale masterfully unspools these parallel stories, we see their subtle and surprising reflections in each other and discover how the forgotten dramas of childhood are reenacted throughout our lives.
Deftly navigating the terrain between humor and tragedy, Patrick Gale has written an unforgettable novel about the lies that adults tell and the small acts of treason that children can commit. Rough Music gracefully illuminates the merciful tricks of memory and the courage with which we continue to assert our belief in love and happiness.
About the Author
Patrick Gale was born in 1962 on the Isle of Wight. He is the author of nine novels, including Tree Surgery for Beginners, The Facts of Life, Little Bits of Baby, and Kansas in August, and a collection of stories, Dangerous Pleasures. He lives in north Cornwall, England.
Reading Group Guide
1. How do the three quotations at the beginning of the novel relate
to your understanding of the book's themes and characters?
2. The novel's alternating chapters underscore the contrast between
children's and adults' perspectives on the world. In what other
ways does the novel suggest that children and adults often have
very different realities?
3. Most of Rough Music is set on and around the beach in Cornwall.
How does the beach--the ocean itself, the shoreline, the sand--
function in the novel?
4. Memory is at the heart of this novel, both in terms of the Pagetts'
recollections of their summer at Beachcomber and Frances's Alzheimer's.
Do you see any connections between these two kinds of
remembering? What kind of personal issues seem to be at stake in
the suppression and failure of memory?
5. What role do nostalgia and homesickness play in the novel?
6. Prisons and various kinds of imprisonment are recurring themes
in Rough Music. Which characters are most concerned with rules
and boundaries? How do family and marriage seem to confine
certain characters?
7. In what ways does language have a capacity to incriminate the
novel's characters? In what ways does it help to liberate them?
8. When Julian frees Lady Percy on the beach, he says, "Go . . .
Quick. Before they can catch you again." What exactly is he trying
to accomplish by releasing his pet? How does this event reflect
his changing sense of the world?
9. How would you describe the betrayals--both intentional and
otherwise--that occur in Rough Music? Do you think the novel
suggests that at least some of these betrayals are inevitable?
10. Skip and Julian's new names represent an attempt to begin new
lives--a reflection of Frances's hopeful "Clean slates all round?"
What do you make of this concept and of the particular name
changes?
11. Julian's enrolment into the Barrowcester Choir School is somewhat
mysterious. What do you imagine is behind this dramatic
development? How does Julian's time at the school seem to
shape him?
12. The book plays games with gender roles and with perceived norms
of masculinity and femininity. How do Julian's ideas about his own
sexuality and maleness develop against this background?
13. How would you characterize our expectations for the novel's female
characters? How do they differ from our expectations for
the male characters?
14. What does "Rough Music," the sculpture, signal or represent for
the novel's characters and for us as readers? Do you think the ti-tle
has another significance?
15. How do you feel about the novel's ending? If you were going to
write an afterword, what would it contain?
1. How do the three quotations at the beginning of the novel relate
to your understanding of the book's themes and characters?
2. The novel's alternating chapters underscore the contrast between
children's and adults' perspectives on the world. In what other
ways does the novel suggest that children and adults often have
very different realities?
3. Most of Rough Music is set on and around the beach in Cornwall.
How does the beach--the ocean itself, the shoreline, the sand--
function in the novel?
4. Memory is at the heart of this novel, both in terms of the Pagetts'
recollections of their summer at Beachcomber and Frances's Alzheimer's.
Do you see any connections between these two kinds of
remembering? What kind of personal issues seem to be at stake in
the suppression and failure of memory?
5. What role do nostalgia and homesickness play in the novel?
6. Prisons and various kinds of imprisonment are recurring themes
in Rough Music. Which characters are most concerned with rules
and boundaries? How do family and marriage seem to confine
certain characters?
7. In what ways does language have a capacity to incriminate the
novel's characters? In what ways does it help to liberate them?
8. When Julian frees Lady Percy on the beach, he says, "Go . . .
Quick. Before they can catch you again." What exactly is he trying
to accomplish by releasing his pet? How does this event reflect
his changing sense of the world?
9. How would you describe the betrayals--both intentional and
otherwise--that occur in Rough Music? Do you think the novel
suggests that at least some of these betrayals are inevitable?
10. Skip and Julian's new names represent an attempt to begin new
lives--a reflection of Frances's hopeful "Clean slates all round?"
What do you make of this concept and of the particular name
changes?
11. Julian's enrolment into the Barrowcester Choir School is somewhat
mysterious. What do you imagine is behind this dramatic
development? How does Julian's time at the school seem to
shape him?
12. The book plays games with gender roles and with perceived norms
of masculinity and femininity. How do Julian's ideas about his own
sexuality and maleness develop against this background?
13. How would you characterize our expectations for the novel's female
characters? How do they differ from our expectations for
the male characters?
14. What does "Rough Music," the sculpture, signal or represent for
the novel's characters and for us as readers? Do you think the ti-tle
has another significance?
15. How do you feel about the novel's ending? If you were going to
write an afterword, what would it contain?