"Following a cardiac arrest which left him clinically dead for 40 minutes, Jago Trevarno, the young narrator of Patrick Charnley's moving debut novel, has retreated to the Cornish village where he grew up, to shelter under the protection of his off-gridder uncle, Jacob. His mother dead of cancer and his father long gone, at 20 Jago's world seems to have shrunk to nothing but the hard daily labour of working a subsistence farm high above the rugged Atlantic coast."
"The building blocks available to Jago are basic. His injury has left him with reduced processing power: his brain's responses are slow and have to remain so, calibrated for recovery. He is also in marked retreat from intense emotion, wary of the havoc it could wreak in his vulnerable synapses, and Jacob kindly, protective and understanding but taciturn, unused to company exerts only minimal emotional counterpressure."
Jago Trevarno suffered a cardiac arrest that left him clinically dead for 40 minutes and returned to the Cornish village where he grew up to live with his off-grid uncle Jacob. At 20, orphaned by his mother's cancer and with an absent father, he works a subsistence farm above the Atlantic, focusing on simple daily labour governed by weather, animals and daylight. His brain functions more slowly and he avoids intense emotion to protect vulnerable synapses. Jacob provides kindly, taciturn support and minimal emotional pressure. As Jago recovers, questions arise about remaining indefinitely in this stasis, especially as neighbours and the outside world encroach.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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