How's Your Father

What goes on behind closed doors? Hows Your Father tells the story of four generations of one Hackney family on a rollercoaster ride of drugs, violence, sickness, infidelity and the redeeming joys of motherhood.

“Rose's book is a tour de force, a sustained piece of brilliant writing... harrowing, funny, heart-breaking and ultimately, despite its bleakness, a celebration of the human spirit.”

Brilliant... I read it with sustained delight and admiration.
Rose Boyt writes with a vivid physical immediacy that can take the breath away. She is an original, with her own strange magic. The Independent
Boyt's language is poetic; her descriptions are vivid, often painful but always lively. Publishers Weekly
There's a sensual, pictorial clarity to Ms. Boyt's writing. New York Times

Rose Boyt was born and lives in London. As a child she lived on a sailing ship taking cargoes round Scandanavia and then emigrated to Trinidad, from where the family was repatriated. She has lived in London ever since. She is the author of two other novels.

"I am waiting for the probable favourable outcome."..Maureen is only trying to keep everyone out of trouble. But her family is all over the place: Alan hides the 'gear' he deals in their mum Nora's kitchen so she gets sent to Holloway, Nora can't stop giving Billy money with which he's only going to go and shoot up, Susan is pregnant and won't tell anyone who the father is, and meanwhile, Maureen is disastrously distracted by Terry, who's just come back into her life even though she's now married to Tony. What's more: Nora and Tom's golden wedding anniversary is coming up, and Linda is organising a big party in the community hall..."Although it feels like there ain't no-one up there what gives a fuck about the likes of us."..So it goes: Nora wins the lottery, Billy goes in rehab, and Victor, Nora's lodger, learns that not everybody in Chaucer Court is happy to believe he's as generous as it seems...This is a multi-generational story through the lives of one family in Hackney-the east end of London where syringes, babies and expletives are shared freely. Refreshing the kitchen-sink genre and using studied local East London patois, Rose Boyt leads us through one family's sprawling, messy and fragile everyday life on an operatic scale. Hows Your Father is a new epic of the quotidian.

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