Mr Geography is the work of a writer operating at the height of his powers. One follows the twists and turns of this story of discovery and self-discovery in a sustained state of delight.
J. M. Coetzee
A beguiling tale about love and betrayal, wrong turns, dangerous abberations and late salvation…
Peter Stamm
A quicksilvery syntax slips through this compelling story of desire and loss…
Kirsty gunn
Daniel Burrow, retired geography teacher, once began a beautiful walk from Konstanz to Como with Julia, mercurial professor of literature, mother to two of his pupils, married, and the love of his life.
After years of their secret affair, they stepped out together on top of the world, full of delight in one another and in the future they imagined. Or was it only Dan who imagined it, really? He never had the chance to find out, because a few days into their adventure a single phone call changed everything.
Now, at the height of summer, with only a rucksack, a few pages of DH Lawrence that had been Julia’s, and his private strata of memory and forgetting, Dan is back on the trail. Step by step, with a tumult of emotions jostling with the demands of the dramatic Alpine landscape, he reckons with what his life is and what it might have been, had he been a different man with different choices.
Parks writes with engrossing immediacy and specificity…Mr Geography delights and surprises to the end: a reminder to us all, regardless of age or profession, that there’s more than one route through life.
Susie Mesure, Sunday Telegraph