Dr Freya Seward is nearly bankrupt, nearly old and nearly has an affair.
Her husband Jamie is nearly impotent, unemployed and brimming with memories and regrets. Bizarre outsider artist Carraday gathers Nearly Stories in the local library and lives with his aged mum in an imaginary aboriginal Nearlyverse somewhere in post-Crash, pre-referendum England. Freya and Jamie find him and their lives explode.
This compelling and darkly funny novel involves secrets, strange desires and alternative selves. There are dodgy deals and nearlysex, puppetry and passing times, songs, psychedelics and a campervan.
Chris Ifso is an artistic explorer. It’s great to see his work come to such vivid life. The Nearly Project is fascinating, playful, serious, wide-ranging, truly thought-provoking. What Didn’t Quite is beautifully written.
- David Almond, author of Skellig, My Name is Mina. I loved this book. Chris Ifso is such a lovely writer. It’s insightful, funny and painful. On occasion it really made me cringe in a too-close-to-home sort of way.
The pace and weave of the narrative is a page turner, the fallibility of the characters lends a real humanity to each, so that while we may not always like them, we want the best outcome for them.
I loved the idea of memory being a park you can keep returning to and the image of the attractive young woman with another made up face painted on top of her real one.
Impossible generational gulfs are revealed, distinct and different from the fractured nature of the lives we live. The book is inhabited by people so very nearly real. I feel like I have met Freya lots of times over the years, she is so beautifully drawn and with such understanding and forgiveness. I felt hopeful that something would work out alright in the end. And it nearly did. It was brilliantly real and fantastical, and sustained throughout with a sense of fun, warmth and maybe forgiveness along with a dangerous pervasive jeopardy of nearlyness. I really did find it hard to put down. It’s a seriously good read.
It’s funny, touching and clever, inhabited with recognisable characters reaching back and stumbling forwards in their lives, flopping towards some sort of redemption that just might come from the mysterious Carraday.
- Joanna K
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE THINGS YOU’VE NEARLY DONE IN YOUR LIFE? Join The Nearly Society www.nearlyology.net
The universe is held together by the dust of of human kind’s nearlyincidence.
