The Repentant Morning (Hardcover)

Chris Paling's remarkable new novel is set in Civil War Spain and in the pubs of Fitzrovia and Soho in the summer and autumn of 1936. In London a group of young people live out an aimless existence, their only excitements drink, sex and sporadic violence. Two of them, Meredith Kerr - an 'actress' who never actually acts - and Billy Royle, are acolytes of Harry Bowden, the wealthy Mosleyite owner of a car showroom. On the fringes of their circle is Arthur Lawler, broke, without a job, only intermittently sober, whose sole purpose in life is to get close to Meredith. But, on the night the book opens, Meredith has met Lawler's friend Kit Renton, and she has fallen in love.

Renton is on his way to Spain, where he joins one of the Republican militias and plunges straight into the terrible fighting on the Aragon front. He is eventually captured and imprisoned by Franco's forces. Meanwhile Meredith, finding a purpose at last, sets off to Spain to find him...

Chris Paling's first novel, After the Raid, was an astonishing imaginative reconstruction of London in the Blitz. The Repentant Morning is even more impressive, perfectly capturing - and contrasting - the sordid ennui of the Londoners' world with that of the fighters in Spain. This is another very fine novel by one of Britain's most interesting writers.