Buried In Print

Anne Peile’s debut novel, Repeat It Today with Tears, opens in this way: “The first time I kissed my father on the mouth it was the the Easter holiday.”

The reader is meant to be shocked. And, fair warning, the author has laid out the book’s subject matter in the opening line: Here there be dragons. If you venture further, you do so at your own risk.

For surely it is risky, taking on such a subject for your first work of fiction: “..something that’s not allowed by law, something that’s frowned upon by the medical profession, by the Church, by society as a whole; it’s a taboo.”

But what this debut novelist does with her story is truly remarkable.

I have a lot more to say about it here.