Silverback

In a Belfast courtroom Robert Rusting is on trial for the murder of his father, a former loyalist hardman. On the jury is James Fechner, a middle-aged surgeon finding himself in search of meaning in the hushed rooms of justice. Rusting is acquitted, but Fechner can't quite return to life before those days in court.

Having found himself drawn to Rusting, Fechner compulsively searches him out in dingy pubs, following an inexplicable pull to the younger man's aggressive, unapologetic way of life. So begins a close friendship, a relationship in which a battle for control is tacit but unspoken - and explosive.

Silverback is a powerful portrayal of toxic masculinity and of the line between fragility and violence written in an unforgettable voice.

Visceral and unpredictable, Silverback is a novel doing what novels do best: it plunges beneath catch-all labels like 'toxic masculinity' to explore the complicated and mercurial humanity of flesh and blood human beings. Harrison's characters are fathers and sons, husbands and friends, mentors and ingenues, all from different walks of life, all vulnerable in their power, and all so starved for connection that tenderness and violence have become indistinguishable. Told with real intelligence, skill and compassion, this is a seriously impressive novel -- Colin Walsh
Silverback is both a murder mystery and a knottily impressive portrait of a peculiarly Ulster form of masculinity -- John Self Sunday Telegraph
Highly original . . . Many novels about The Troubles depict the horrors that take place on the street. This one, set at an intriguing remove, exposes the more ambiguous horrors gnawing within Daily Mail
a dark and unnerving tale of heartless fathers and damaged sons told in a spare, clinical tone . . . Harrison writes with great conviction, his story moving forward with tragic insight -- John Boyne Irish Times

Phil Harrison is a writer and filmmaker. His debut novel, The First Day, also set in Belfast, was published in 2017.

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