Small Hours by Bobby Palmer

 

Small Hours by Bobby Palmer.

Published 14th March 2024 by Headline.

From the cover of the book:

The eagerly awaited new novel from Bobby Palmer, author of the critically acclaimed debut Isaac and the Egg.

If you stood before sunrise in this wild old place, looking through the trees into the garden, here's what you'd see:

A father and son, a fox standing between them.

Jack, home for the first time in years, still determined to be the opposite of his father.

Gerry, who would rather talk to animals than the angry man back under his roof.

Everything that follows is because of the fox, and because Jack's mother is missing. It spans generations of big dreams and lost time, unexpected connections and things falling apart, great wide worlds and the moments that define us.

If you met them in the small hours, you'd begin to piece together their story.

***********

When Jack loses the job he has put years of his life into, at the expense of everything else, including his relationship with his family, he is lost. A phone call from his sister Charlotte, telling him their mother has gone missing, brings him back home and forces him to confront the reality of a crumbling family home that he has not visited in years, his sister's simmering anger at his abandonment of them, and the dementia that is slowly claiming their father, Gerry.

Jack is full of anger of his own at the direction his life has taken. He is unable, and unwilling to even attempt, to cross the divide that has grown up between him and his father - not to mention bemused at Charlotte's resentment towards him, and unable to get his head around why his mother would suddenly take off out of the blue.

Gerry is lost too. His life has become one of confusion, and memories of the past now seem to concern him more than the unfathomable human interactions happening around him in the present. His only solace is his garden and the wildlife that lives in the woods around his home. One thing he is sure of though... that his wife is not really missing, and will return once she has made the journey she needs to complete.

There seems to be no way to bring this troubled family back together, but all hope his not lost. Between Jack and Gerry stands a fox - a wise fox - that sees and understands much more than any wild animal should...

Lone foxes die alone...

Small Hours is the highly anticipated follow-up to Bobby Palmer's astonishing debut, Isaac and the Egg, and the emotive muscle that he exerts through the use of language and different literary techniques is, ironically, very difficult to sum up in words. 

The story unfurls through beautifully written scenes from Jack's perspective as he tries to navigate extremely difficult family circumstances, which he knows he has been guilty of pushing to one side rather than dealing with, interspersed with fragmented passages from Gerry that represent his equally fractured state of mind; flashes back to the past of Gerry and his wife's relationship; and sections of what can only be described as free verse, mostly on the part of our friend, the fox. It is certainly unconventional in story-telling terms, but somehow everything comes together in an exquisite perfect storm of atmosphere and emotion that is simply breath taking.

Palmer manages to achieve so much in this story, immersing you completely in a compelling, inter-generational family drama that thrums with relatable themes. He explores the weight of loss, and facets of memory with such sensitivity, especially when it comes to Gerry's dementia. He writes so well about sibling relationships rife with recriminations, long marriages, parenthood, and the feeling that time has passed all too quickly to recapture the moments that have slipped through our fingers. I am not sure how 'real' Palmer intends for his fox to be, or if it is merely the metaphor for the healing power of nature on broken souls that it becomes, but this does not actually matter in the grand scheme of things - I was completely invested in the little furry creature that forms the catalyst to bring this dysfunctional family back together, and consumed with floods of tears about where this story ultimately goes.

This is a quiet novel, imbued with all the thought-provoking poignancy that its title, Small Hours, brings to mind, which makes it truly powerful. I promise you, this is novel that will stay with you a long time after you close the cover. 

About the author:

BOBBY PALMER is an author and journalist. His critically acclaimed debut novel, Isaac and the Egg, was published in 2022 and was a Waterstones paperback of the year. He co-hosted the literary podcast Book Chat with Pandora Sykes, and his writing has appeared in GQ, Esquire, Men's Health, Cosmopolitan and more.