Belonging

Scottish drifter Jack McCall, handyman in an Alpine ski resort, spends his days sneaking into the empty penthouses of the super-rich with his partner Anna, sipping champagne and partying in private jacuzzis. At 29, Jack’s unsure of what he wants from life, but Anna wants commitment. Then one night a man slips on a frozen balcony in a nearby apartment and dies from his injuries. Only one person saw what happened – the man’s lover Therese, a quiet French girl with firework-coloured hair. Looking back, Jack remembers his first sight of Therese as the moment things started to go wrong…Ron Butlin’s third novel descends into a 21st century heart of darkness as Jack gravitates first to Paris, then to a hippy commune in Spain’s parched northern wilderness, where the subsistence idyll is ultimately shattered by violence, infidelity and death. Amid a society overshadowed by threats of terrorism and natural disasters, Ron Butlin’s characters struggle to put down roots, and pass through ice and fire to achieve redemption – and finally, a kind of belonging.