First published 1989
Bert has always believed adults live in madness. At eighteen, he watches the grown-up world with bewilderment as relatives, politicians, and celebrities swirl around him in London. His uncle serves as England's prime minister, placing Bert at the center of a circus filled with television personalities, young revolutionaries, and pop stars. The adults seem drawn to disaster and confusion rather than happiness, despite what philosophers claim about human nature. Bert visits his psychoanalyst regularly, trying to understand the gap between what people show the world and what they actually experience inside. Through these sessions, he grapples with questions about exterior versus interior truth. Mosley weaves Bert's coming-of-age story with broader questions about whether art can capture these different layers of reality. The novel follows both Bert and his creator as they work through the challenge of representing authentic experience in a world obsessed with surface appearances.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, 20th-century, coming-of-age, contemporary, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, unreliable-narrator
Setting: England, London
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
186 pages · Hardcover · Dalkey Archive Press