It's All Right Now

Faber and Faber, London, 2005. Good secondhand condition.

Meet Tom Ripple, a man with an uncommon outlook on his common life. At home in a North London suburb, Ripple keeps close tabs on his neighbors while his own family splinters apart. As the years pass by he forges on, bravely and awkwardly, in his relationships with his wife and children, his parents, girlfriends, colleagues, and friends, and in his ongoing search for certainties, both moral and practical.

But what he gains in wisdom over time, he loses in love, as his marriage disintegrates and his children grow further away from him. The more he lives and the more he learns, the less he understands.

Through the vividness of his voice and his growing sense of the sorrow and absurdity of the world, Tom Ripple becomes an unusually appealing anti-hero, aware of his ordinariness and the limits of his intelligence, with a ribald sense of humor, and a clumsiness in his attempts at emotional connection with others. He is a bewildered everyman navigating his way through modern times.

In this remarkable debut novel, Charles Chadwick has created one of the most memorable, brilliantly realized characters in contemporary fiction. By turns poignant, funny, heartbreaking, and profound, It's All Right Now is a towering achievement and a singular work of the imagination.