Published by Faber & Faber
When Lara was twelve, and her younger brother Alfie was eight, their father died in a helicopter crash. A prominent plastic surgeon, and Irishman, he had honed his skills on the bomb victims of the Troubles. But the family grew up used to him being absent: he only came to London for two weekends a month to work at the Harley Street Clinic, where he met their mother years before, and they only once went on a family holiday together, to Spain, where their mother cried and their father lost his temper and left early.
Because home, for their father, wasn’t Earls Court: it was Belfast, where he led his other life…
Narrated by Lara, nearing forty and nursing her dying mother, All the Beggars Riding is the heartbreaking portrait of a woman confronting her past just as she realises that time is running out.
I met Lucy at a book event in Folkestone, her talk was very good so I was interested in reading her book. I enjoyed how it was told by Lucy as her feelings came through, not all good but then no one’s life is all good. I felt that her mother was a selfish woman who didn’t think about her children at all, it was all about her and what she wanted and did during her life. I don’t think that children could be hidden from the truth nowadays which I think is good but then dreamland is a nice bubble to be in.
