Father Figure

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 NichollsIt’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 INSATIABLELiterary, thrilling, hugely funny, with a massive heart. The perfect read – Sara Pascoe, author of WEIRDOI 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 LISTI 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 ADULTSFunny, rich, complex, multidimensional, with a heroine as tender as she is unhinged - I tore through it – Nussaibah Younis, author of FUNDAMENTALLYA compulsive, twisty, boundary pushing novel – Harlan Coben, author of THINK TWICE

Born in London, Emma Forrest began her writing career as a teenage columnist on a national newspaper. By thirty, she had published three novels and exited journalism to work in Hollywood as a screenwriter. Her memoir Your Voice In My Head is a classic of the genre. Emma wrote and directed her first feature Untogether, which premiered at the Tribeca Film festival. Her most recent novel, Royals, was the Radio 2 Book Club pick.