'Kensington Gardens' marks the English language debut of one Latin America's most brilliant, playful and stylish novelists
Spanning more than a century from the late Victorian period - and the intimately drawn details of the life of JM Barrie - to the dawn of the new millennium - and the fractured life of an internationally acclaimed children's novelist, Peter Hook - Kensington Gardens weaves an intricate cat's cradle of narratives around the Lysergic-London of the Swinging Sixties and the boy who never grew up.
Growing up in a vast west London estate called Neverland, Hook's childhood was shaped by the mysterious death of his younger brother, his parents' rock'n'roll lifestyle and his father's performance in a seminal band of the time. Yet despite (or perhaps because of) such dysfunctional beginnings, Hook has become the most successful author of his generation as the author of the time-travelling Jim Yang.
In 'Kensington Gardens', Hook narrates his story (and that of Barrie, Peter Pan and Llewelyn Davies) to Keiko Kai, the Japanese actor cursed with the role of playing Jim Yang in the blockbuster movies of his creation. Over the course of one night in a flat in Kensington Gardens, a fantastical and terrible story emerges - a story of shadow identities and suicide, lost boys and found orphans.
