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Father Figure
- Author
- Emma Forrest
- Narrator
- Ruth Lass
- Publisher
- Orion
- Publish Date
- 3 July 2025
- Run Time
- 6 hours
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
'So wild and gripping' DAVID NICHOLLS
'I tore through it' NUSSAIBAH YOUNIS
'A ferocious coming-of-age story' EMMA JANE UNSWORTH
'A truly beautiful story about longing and London' DAISY BUCHANAN
Gail is in trouble at school. Saint Saviours, the exclusive private girls school that she attends on a scholarship, cannot contain her. Impulsive, bored and looking for someone to adore, she is at that dangerous age when you want to be picked up by men and then driven home by your mother.
Ezra is rich, powerful and at the top of his game. His comfortable middle age is tainted only by the knowledge that, in his heady youth, he'd loved new wave music and had people killed - and by his crushing anxieties about his teenage daughter, Agata.
When Agata starts at Saint Saviour's, Gail and Ezra's paths cross, and with an unstoppable momentum, their lives intertwine in ways more dangerous than either could ever predict.
Critics Review
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Bristling with sexual, political and emotional angst, this finely tuned coming-of-age tale thrives on the grey areas of adolescence . . . As a novelist, Forrest tends to reserve judgment: her characters are not likable, but they are tender. They feel things very deeply, and Forrest treats each one with distinction. You could never mistake them for anyone else
Guardian
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I so enjoyed this novel of teenage obsession and chaos, a north London My Summer of Love, so wild and gripping
David Nicholls, author of YOU ARE HERE
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Alive, absorbing and perceptive, Father Figure is about an obsessive London teenage misfit hurtling haphazardly toward self-redemption even as she follows her every worst instinct. Brimming with empathy and humour toward its lovingly damaged characters. Unforgettable!
Sanam Mahloudji, author of THE PERSIANS
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Literary, thrilling, hugely funny, with a massive heart. The perfect read
Sara Pascoe, author of WEIRDO
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It's a story I fell into, and lived in. Gail belongs in the canon of all-time great heroines - wild, weird, vulnerable and powerful. Father Figure is a truly beautiful story about longing and London - I adore the wit, tenderness and ferocity of Emma Forrest's writing, and I'm going to be thinking about this book for a long time
Daisy Buchanan, author of INSATIABLE
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I am pained by how good this book is - gorgeous, glorious writing; a heady coming-of-age tale and an utterly compelling literary thriller. What a treat!
Lucy Foley, author of THE GUEST LIST
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I am obsessed with Emma Forrest. Everything she writes is delicious. Her observations of humanity, in all its messy glory, are as funny as they are deep. A true stylist, she writes with wit, grit, immense charm and inimitable panache. No other writer is capable of such tenderness one moment and then such skewering the next. Father Figure is both a ferocious coming-of-age and a fearless examination of the nature of obsession. It's mothers and daughters and female friends and older men, all under a red-lit microscope. It is that rarest kind of book - one that feels simultaneously like home and adventure. I kissed it when I finished it
Emma Jane Unsworth, author of SLAGS
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Funny, rich, complex, multidimensional, with a heroine as tender as she is unhinged - I tore through it
Nussaibah Younis, author of FUNDAMENTALLY
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A compulsive, twisty, boundary pushing novel
Harlan Coben, author of THINK TWICE
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Emma Forrest
- Narrator
- Ruth Lass
- Duration
- 6 hours
- Release Date
- 3 July 2025
- ISBN
- 9781399633901
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Orion
- Genre
- Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Narrative theme: coming of age
Synopsis
'Literary, thrilling, hugely funny, with a massive heart' SARA PASCOE'So wild and gripping' DAVID NICHOLLS'I tore through it' NUSSAIBAH YOUNIS'A ferocious coming-of-age story' EMMA JANE UNSWORTH'A truly beautiful story about longing and London' DAISY BUCHANANGail is in trouble at school. Saint Saviours, the exclusive private girls school that she attends on a scholarship, cannot contain her. Impulsive, bored and looking for someone to adore, she is at that dangerous age when you want to be picked up by men and then driven home by your mother. Ezra is rich, powerful and at the top of his game. His comfortable middle age is tainted only by the knowledge that, in his heady youth, he'd loved new wave music and had people killed - and by his crushing anxieties about his teenage daughter, Agata. When Agata starts at Saint Saviour's, Gail and Ezra's paths cross, and with an unstoppable momentum, their lives intertwine in ways more dangerous than either could ever predict.
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