Image for The Fowler family business

The Fowler family business

See all formats and editions

'One of the funniest and truest writers we have. No one understands England better than Meades.' Stephen Fry An inventively nasty, gruesomely comic paean to the sylvan heights of Forest Hill and Upper Norwood, a warped map of the death trade's quotidian strangeness. Henry Fowler was twice, long ago, runner-up in the Oil Fuels Guild-sponsored Young Funeral Director of the Year competition.

His intense loyalties are to his parents, to his wife and children, to the family firm and the trade it practises, to his native south-east London and to his best friend Curly, traffic wonk and surviving brother of his former best friend who fell to his death at Norwood Junction.

Well into middle age, and Henry's life is running smoothly as he always hoped it would.

But then: his wife's tennis partner, a celebrity florist and BBC2 star is accidentally beheaded by his electric hedgecutter while crimping a three metre high topiary poodle; Curly, newly married and eager for a child is diagnosed as suffering 'waterworks problems'; and Henry, suddenly doubtful of his wife's fidelity, cuts a lock of his sleeping daughter's hair.

The foundations of a world, a family and an identity begin to rock.

Read More
Available
£7.99 Save 20.00%
RRP £9.99
Add Line Customisation
Usually dispatched within 2 weeks
Add to List
Product Details
4th Estate
1857029046 / 9781857029048
Paperback / softback
823.914
03/02/2003
United Kingdom
English
General
212 p.
20 cm
general Learn More
Reprint. Originally published: 2002.