Gritstone – Alan Newcombe
ISBN: 9781788648905
£11.99
Lying on a lounger outside a flyblown café in Naples, Mike reflects on the last three months. With his marriage in free-fall, he’d set off to visit the charismatic Al, who’d founded a closed community in the Calder Valley and, in his 60s, was getting married. Three months later, Mike’s wearing a white robe, and standing over an open grave.
Alan Newcombe vividly immerses us in the community of Gritstone House. There’s no electricity or running water – they want no contact with the outside world. There’s Edith, the bride, who tells Mike secrets she daren’t reveal to Al. There’s Helmut the goatherd who may have burnt down his parent’s house. And who was Asif whose mandalas are in every room?
And there’s Al. He once managed a boyband, worked for the Sandinistas, massacred a logging gang in the Amazon, and was a millionaire city broker. He says he’s left his buccaneering past behind. But Mike discovers Al pulls all the strings in a house where there’s fraud, secret burials, and clandestine murder.
Gothic and serious, yet brimming with wit and dark humour, Gritstone is an impressive debut that you won’t be able to put down.
Author biography
Alan grew up in post-war London with Canadian and English parents. He witnessed the transition from the drab 1950’s’ in a city littered with bombsites, to the seismic burst of colour in the late 60’s. His own memories of that era feed into the stories of his characters in his debut novel Gritstone.
Alan’s writing encompasses a fascination with people’s shared history and family heritage—but also concealment, the limits of friendship, and living outside any law.
Gritstone is set in the Calder Valley, an area Alan has known and visited for many years. The landscape lends itself to the Gothic undertow in the novel.
Alan currently does therapeutic work in schools. He plays saxophones on the free music scene in London which is now more vibrant than ever, performing with players who are pushing the envelope. He is married and has lived near Epping Forest for over forty years. He continues to lose himself there.