The Perfect Man [Hardcover]

Like most good novels The Perfect Man succeeds because it’s so impeccably well written. Murr’s characterisations are often elegantly succinct

Murr reveals a small-town legacy of brutality, passion and vulnerability that lingers in the mind like an obsession

A hauntingly beautiful coming of age story, set in the backwoods of 1950s Missouri --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

"The Perfect Man" explores the power - both destructive and liberating - of what is not told, of the secrets that can shape us more profoundly than everything we believe to be true. Rajiv Travers, the child of an Indian mother and English father, is abandoned first to relatives in London and later to the care of his uncle's mistress, Ruth Winters, who lives in a small American town. Beginning with Ruth, a remote figure who writes romance novels filled with perfect men, this town turns out to be as exotic and strange to Rajiv as he is to its inhabitants. But Rajiv, though always an outsider, finds love when he is befriended by four of the town's children. As the children grow older, their friendship becomes increasingly intense, and is complicated not only by desire and shifting loyalties, but also by the personal failings - and secrets - of the adults around them. One secret in particular is masked by silence: the mystery surrounding the death, years before Rajiv's arrival, of an autistic child. When the silence breaks, the violence, anger, and madness that erupts costs one of Rajiv's friends the chance for any real future. As Rajiv tries to establish his place in a town besieged by what cannot be spoken, some of the people he encounters fail utterly in their humanity, bringing about horrific consequences. Others, like Ruth - and Rajiv himself - though hardly perfect, at least struggle to understand and accept not only what love gives, but what it exacts.

A hauntingly beautiful coming of age story, set in the backwoods of 1950s Missouri

Rajiv Travers, the child of an Indian mother and English father, is abandoned first to relatives in London and later to the care of his uncle’s mistress, Ruth Winters, a remote figure who writes romance novels in which beautiful women find the perfect man.

The small American town where Ruth lives turns out to be as exotic to Rajiv as he is to its decidedly imperfect inhabitants. Though ever an outsider, hated by some, Rajiv is befriended by four children. As these children grow older, their relationships intensify, complicated not only by desire, but also by the personal failings-and secrets-of the adults around them.

One secret in particular is kept by many: the mystery surrounding the death, years before Rajiv’s arrival, of an autistic child. The pressure of this silence, as it erupts finally into a night of madness and violence, costs one of Rajiv’s circle the chance for any real future.

As Rajiv tries to establish his place in a town besieged by what cannot be spoken, he and his four friends come up against an adult world in which some are cruel, even brutal, but many are simply weak; others though, such as Ruth, have not given up the struggle against their worst selves. In their courage lies the means for these children to understand, for Rajiv finally to accept, not only the joy that love in its many forms can give, but what it can, at its darkest and most obsessive, exact.

Praise for Naeem Murr:

'[Murr's] prose-bursts into flower, taking us straight to the passionate heart of his characters. Words and phrases take on an almost translucent elasticity, stretching to encompass new ideas, giving scenes a compelling visual wholeness and suggesting real complexity' - Independent on Sunday

'I intently turned the pages-carried along by Murr's dark energy, his sharply intelligent prose, his genius for the unexpected, his keen sense of atmosphere. And the novel's harrowing conclusion more than demonstrates [his] stunning gifts.' - New York Times
Like Margaret Atwood, Murr traffics in images so capably that the novel's space becomes a kind of magnetic field, alluring . . . Like the abandoned buildings that are its backdrop, The Boy makes it hard for readers to walk away unhaunted.' Washington Post
'Naeem Murr has a hideously beautiful imagination and a wholly original talent' - Mary Gaitskill

Naeem Murr was born and raised in London and has lived in the USA since 1987. He has published a number of prize winning stories and novellas. His critically acclaimed first novel, The Boy, was published in 1998 and has been translated into six languages.