Overview

As a schoolboy he secretly hated his drab, ordered world; now, at the age of forty, he is finally fleeing from a life he can no longer handle when he stumbles upon the circus. Not knowing why, only that he must, he follows after it, determined to build a new home and family. The Trapeze Artist draws together the past, present and future of one life to create a work of startling dexterity and vision - a haunting and heartbreaking account of a child, a boy, a man, desperate to free himself from the suffocating weight of his desires, his family and his grief. It speaks of what it is to grow up gay in a straight world, to be unable to communicate with those you love, and above all, the longing to break away, and to swing higher and higher...

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9781408831625

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Reviews

An extraordinary tale of tragedy and failure in love, told with great panache Edmund White His best book yet Evening Standard An elegant, poignant and perceptive novel about growing up gay without the support of family, about falling and failing in love and about the freedom of eccentricity. A remarkable book Sydney Morning Herald As a performance, Will Davis's third novel, about a man who has a nervous breakdown and runs away with the circus, is distinctive. It begins, formidably, with a page written in the future tense. A sleepless man longs - will long - for a new life. On the next page a new section, this one in the past tense, recalls the man's infancy. After that the tense switches again, to the present, for a scene at the circus. Thereafter Davis keeps all three sequences spinning until, for the finish, he catches them neatly: the past produces the present, and the present turns fearlessly into the future. With a double flourish, everything becomes clear ... the closing scene is heart-stopping -- Colin Greenland Guardian PRAISE FOR MY SIDE OF THE STORY: 'Will Davis is a witty writer who effortlessly conjures up the frenetic detail of Jaz's sixteen-year-old world Independent A fresh and funny novel about growing up gay, with absolutely no help from a mad family. Davis gives his narrator a wonderfully wry outlook Kate Saunders, The Times The dialogue fizzes with savvy one-liners ... Davis's observations of the dysfunctions of family and school are as sharp as his prose is fresh, and his debut is intriguing, touching and entertaining Time Out

Author Information

Will Davis is the author of two novels, My Side of the Story, which won the Betty Trask Prize 2007, and Dream Machine. He has trained as an aerialist and specializes in corde lisse (rope), tissu (silks) and static trapeze. He lives in Highbury, London.

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