Thin-Ice Skater (Paperback, New edition)

David Storey's new novel is the story of two half-brothers, Rick and Gerry Audlin. Rick lives with Gerry, who is thirty-five years his senior, in his large house in Hampstead. Gerry is a wealthy, driven, film producer, a 'thin-ice skater'. Rick, old beyond his years, attends a bizarre private school and obsessively writes himself 'memos' about his situation. Meanwhile Gerry's wife Martha, once a famous actress, languishes in an asylum, visited only by Rick. When Gerry has to go abroad, he sends Rick to stay with his other half-brother James in the country. James is a businessman and a writer of unpublished detective stories. He is also impotent, and when his wife Clare seduces Rick he appears to collude in their affair. On Gerry's return to England Rick goes back to London, but everything has suddenly changed. The house is deserted; his key no longer fits. When the brothers are reunited Gerry sends Rick to Jubilee Hall, a strange psychiatric community run by the charismatic Phil O'Connor. It is O'Connor who reveals the secret that has devastated the lives of all the characters and precipitates the startling climax to this remarkable novel.