by Dexter Petley
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'From the unfortunate Norman's French farm, haunted by its own history, to a terrifying Uganda in casual chaos, Dexter Petley's perfect writer's eye gives us a cadenced love story of struggle and the familiar panic of break up. Gripping, often dryly hysterical, White Lies reeks of beauty and human truth.' Alan Warner
Dexter Petley's earlier works, Joyride and Little Nineveh, earned him praise from the critics for his penetrating insights and the versatility of his language, and his third novel is yet another example of clear, lucid prose that conjures up brilliant images of two different worlds in crisis. After reading about Joy, the Gold Panning Missionary, in a magazine, Norman knows it is his destiny to find her. He has already spent several years in Africa, so his journey back to Kenya and Uganda to track her down is a sort of homecoming. Guided by Austen, the husband of one of his mistresses in London, and the sinister Schick, Norman sets off on his mission, encountering villainy and poverty, friendship and murder along the way. But Petley doesn't make things easy for the reader. Straightforward narrative is not his style, and the action moves rapidly from Norman's quest to find Joy to the dilapidated farmhouse they share in France. Or rather, used to share, for when the novel begins, Joy is on the verge of walking out on Norman. With remarkable dexterity, Petley switches from Le Haut Bois in the 1990s, where Norman and Joy are drowning in a sea of memorabilia left behind by the farm's previous owner, to war-torn Africa in the previous decade, where life or death can depend on whether or not you have a spare cigarette or 'stick' in your pocket to get you out of trouble. The novel spans ten years of searching; years in which Norman pursues love, finds it, enjoys its sweetness far too briefly and watches in despair as it trickles away from him. Bereft, he attempts to make some sense of his destroyed relationship, but in the end he is drawn back to where it all started - to Africa, where he eventually comes face to face with his childhood nemesis and is able to lay the ghosts of the past to rest. (Kirkus UK)
Dexter Petley's earlier works, Joyride and Little Nineveh, earned him praise from the critics for his penetrating insights and the versatility of his language, and his third novel is yet another example of clear, lucid prose that conjures up brilliant images of two different worlds in crisis. After reading about Joy, the Gold Panning Missionary, in a magazine, Norman knows it is his destiny to find her. He has already spent several years in Africa, so his journey back to Kenya and Uganda to track her down is a sort of homecoming. Guided by Austen, the husband of one of his mistresses in London, and the sinister Schick, Norman sets off on his mission, encountering villainy and poverty, friendship and murder along the way. But Petley doesn't make things easy for the reader. Straightforward narrative is not his style, and the action moves rapidly from Norman's quest to find Joy to the dilapidated farmhouse they share in France. Or rather, used to share, for when the novel begins, Joy is on the verge of walking out on Norman. With remarkable dexterity, Petley switches from Le Haut Bois in the 1990s, where Norman and Joy are drowning in a sea of memorabilia left behind by the farm's previous owner, to war-torn Africa in the previous decade, where life or death can depend on whether or not you have a spare cigarette or 'stick' in your pocket to get you out of trouble. The novel spans ten years of searching; years in which Norman pursues love, finds it, enjoys its sweetness far too briefly and watches in despair as it trickles away from him. Bereft, he attempts to make some sense of his destroyed relationship, but in the end he is drawn back to where it all started - to Africa, where he eventually comes face to face with his childhood nemesis and is able to lay the ghosts of the past to rest. (Kirkus UK)
Observer
'Raw and intense.'
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