Common

About this item

A coming to terms with marriage and career, the life-long impact of a father's alcoholism, and an aunt's insistent example to live an unroofed life. "I had gone to the common under the vague impression that I wished to recapture something of a life I no longer possessed." Engaging with fiction, auto-fiction, place writing, and visual cultures, as well their various intersections with solitude, privilege, gender, whiteness, ageing, memory, and illness, Common is an introspective novel about loss, disillusionment, and the attempt to reconnect with both the legacies of the past and the intransigence of the present. Following the death of his aunt, Abilene, in between two national lockdowns the narrator, Robert, travels from his home near Manchester to his childhood home in Hampshire to settle the affairs of her estate. Upon arriving at his aunt’s house and confronted with all the debris of a life left behind, Robert goes for a walk on nearby Ludshott