Cedilla

Description

Cedilla continues the history of John Cromer begun by Pilcrow, described by the London Review of Books as peculiar, original, utterly idiosyncratic and by the Sunday Times as truly exhilarating. In Cedilla John Cromer, the classic outsider - a gay, wheelchair-bound teenager - launches himself into the world of mainstream education, from grammar school to Cambridge in the early 1970s, and comes upon deeper joys, subtler setbacks. John observes everything, from the recipes of the time to the behaviour of a vast and entertaining cast of characters, including his fellow students and long-suffering parents. He even manages to take a trip to India, to visit the ashram of his guru, and details his obsessions with the popular culture of the early seventies in devastatingly funny detail. Cedilla is an epic of detailed observation and a life-changing read.

Adam Mars-Jones's first book of stories, Lantern Lecture, was published in 1981 and won a Somerset Maugham Award. In 1983 and again in 1993 he was named one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists, despite not having produced a novel at the time. His Zen status as an acclaimed novelist without a novel was dented by the appearance of The Waters of Thirst, and can only suffer further with the appearance of Pilcrow and Cedilla.