Father Figure

Reviews / Votes

Bristling with sexual, political and emotional angst, this finely tuned coming-of-age tale thrives on the grey areas of adolescence . . . As a novelist, Forrest tends to reserve judgment: her characters are not likable, but they are tender. They feel things very deeply, and Forrest treats each one with distinction. You could never mistake them for anyone else -- Ella Risbridger * Guardian * I so enjoyed this novel of teenage obsession and chaos, a north London My Summer of Love, so wild and gripping -- David Nicholls, author of YOU ARE HERE Alive, absorbing and perceptive, Father Figure is about an obsessive London teenage misfit hurtling haphazardly toward self-redemption even as she follows her every worst instinct. Brimming with empathy and humour toward its lovingly damaged characters. Unforgettable! -- Sanam Mahloudji, author of THE PERSIANS Literary, thrilling, hugely funny, with a massive heart. The perfect read -- Sara Pascoe, author of WEIRDO It's a story I fell into, and lived in. Gail belongs in the canon of all-time great heroines - wild, weird, vulnerable and powerful. Father Figure is a truly beautiful story about longing and London - I adore the wit, tenderness and ferocity of Emma Forrest's writing, and I'm going to be thinking about this book for a long time -- Daisy Buchanan, author of INSATIABLE I am pained by how good this book is - gorgeous, glorious writing; a heady coming-of-age tale and an utterly compelling literary thriller. What a treat! -- Lucy Foley, author of THE GUEST LIST I am obsessed with Emma Forrest. Everything she writes is delicious. Her observations of humanity, in all its messy glory, are as funny as they are deep. A true stylist, she writes with wit, grit, immense charm and inimitable panache. No other writer is capable of such tenderness one moment and then such skewering the next. Father Figure is both a ferocious coming-of-age and a fearless examination of the nature of obsession. It's mothers and daughters and female friends and older men, all under a red-lit microscope. It is that rarest kind of book - one that feels simultaneously like home and adventure. I kissed it when I finished it -- Emma Jane Unsworth, author of SLAGS Funny, rich, complex, multidimensional, with a heroine as tender as she is unhinged - I tore through it -- Nussaibah Younis, author of FUNDAMENTALLY A compulsive, twisty, boundary pushing novel -- Harlan Coben, author of THINK TWICE