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by Claire Adam
A deeply affecting debut novel set in Trinidad, following the lives of a family as they navigate impossible choices about scarcity, loyalty, and love.
Rural Trinidad: a brick house on stilts surrounded by bush; a family, quietly surviving, just trying to live a decent life. Clyde, the father, works long, exhausting shifts at the petroleum plant in southern Trinidad; Joy, his wife, looks after the home. Their two sons, thirteen years old, wake early every morning to travel to the capital, Port of Spain, for school. They are twins but nothing alike: Paul has always been considered odd, while Peter is widely believed to be a genius, destined for greatness.
When Paul goes walking in the bush one afternoon and doesn't come home, Clyde is forced to go looking for him, this child who has caused him endless trouble already, and who he has never really understood. And as the hours turn to days, and Clyde begins to understand Paul's fate, his world shatters - leaving him faced with a decision no parent should ever have to make.
Like the Trinidadian landscape itself, Golden Child is both beautiful and unsettling; a resoundingly human story of aspiration, betrayal, and love.
Readers Guide
"Starred Review. Throughout this stunning portrait of Trinidad's multicultural diversity, and one family's sacrifices, soaring hopes and ultimate despair, Adam weaves a poetic lightness and beauty that will transfix readers." - Publishers Weekly
"Recommended for readers of suspenseful family dramas." - Library Journal
"Golden Child swells with wisdom about masculinity, family, violence and sacrifice. I read it in a sitting, gripping the pages, nails chewed down by the final word. An intense, heart-breaking debut." - Daniel Magariel, author of One of the Boys
"Golden Child is a stunning novel written with force and beauty. Though true to herself, Adam's work stands tall beside icons of her tradition like V.S. Naipaul." - Jennifer Clement, author of Gun Love
This information about Golden Child was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
photo: Tricia Keracher-Summerfield
Claire Adam's debut novel, Golden Child, was published by Sarah Jessica Parker's SJP for Hogarth. It was listed as one of the BBC's "100 Novels That Shaped Our World" and was awarded the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award, and the McKitterick Prize. She was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago. She studied physics at Brown University and later received an MA in creative writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. Adam lives in London.
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