Druhý díl volné trilogie o půvabech a zvláštnostech života v jihofrancouzské Provenci (Rok v Provenci, Navždy Provence! Peter Mayle, milovník francouzské kuchyně i místních lahodných vín, a především skvělý humorista a vypravěč, nás opět zavede do prosluněných vinic a ospalých provinčních městeček v zemi, kde našel svůj druhý domov.
With the startling emotional immediacy of a fractured family photo album, Lauck's memoir is the story of an ordinary girl growing up at the turn of the 1970s, and the truly extraordinary circumstances of a childhood lost.
"In the autumn of 2004, shortly after his memorable interview with the President of the United States and following the publication of his elder son's novelised autobiography, cruelly entitled "Under His Shadow", celebrity journalist, broadcaster and documentary film-maker Harold Cleaver boarded a British Airways flight from London Gatwick to Milan Malpensa, proceeded by Italian railways as far as Bruneck in the South Tyrol and thence by taxi, northwards, to the village of Luttach only a few kilometres from the Austrian border, from whence he hoped to find some remote mountain habitation in which to spend the next, if not necessarily the last, years of his life." Thus opens Tim Parks' new novel and masterpiece. Overweight and overwrought, London's most successful journalist abandons home, partner, mistresses and above all television, the instrument that brought him identity and power. His quest: to climb above "the noise line," to get beyond the e.mail and the mobile phone and the interminable clamour of the public voice of which he himself was such a master. Weeks later, snowed in at five thousand feet, harangued by voices from the past and humiliated by his inability to understand the gothic peasants he relies on for food and whisky, Cleaver discovers that there is nowhere so noisy and so dangerous as the solitary mind.
Na het overlijden van hun moeder blijven Teddy Pappas en zijn jongere broertje met hun wereldvreemde vader achter. Op de dag dat het precies één jaar geleden is dat Teddy's moeder ten gevolge van een ongeluk overleed, speelt zijn vader, ter nagedachtenis aan zijn vrouw, met haar favoriete nummers de loterij. Hij wint $190 miljoen. Zodra dit heuglijke nieuws bekend is staat de telefoon niet meer stil. Iedereen weet de familie Pappas te vinden om een kruimeltje mee te pikken. Als het allemaal uit de hand dreigt te lopen, komen Teddy en zijn vader er achter wat nu precies 'het goede leven' is.
Diepgaande gesprekken tussen vader en dochter over thema's als geluk, creativiteit, liefde en begaafdheid.