In February of 1935, two young Irishmen walk in the grounds of a London mental hospital. Arthur Bourne, a junior psychiatrist, is about to jeopardise his future for his closest friend, an aspiring writer called Louis Molyneux.
Arthur has been overshadowed since childhood by his brilliant, troubled friend. But after years of playing the unassuming companion, he is learning that loyalty has its costs: that old friendship may thwart new love, and perhaps even blur distinctions between the sane and the mad . . .
Jott is a story about friendship, madness and modernism from the author of the Man Booker-longlisted Communion Town.
Arthur has been overshadowed since childhood by his brilliant, troubled friend. But after years of playing the unassuming companion, he is learning that loyalty has its costs: that old friendship may thwart new love, and perhaps even blur distinctions between the sane and the mad . . .
Jott is a story about friendship, madness and modernism from the author of the Man Booker-longlisted Communion Town.
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Reviews
A complex, nuanced literary novel of extraordinary perception
A shrewd portrait of a particular kind of male friendship, simultaneously intense and incomplete
Engaging
It's a rare treat to read a novel that pulls you into its world so quickly and deeply. The characters and their interrelationships are unfolded with mesmerizing precision
The flowing narrative and nuances of everyday life, paralleled with failure and triumph, is reminiscent of James Joyce
A fresh and supple portrait of an era in flux . . . expertly done
In Jott [Thompson] shows another simpler life where one focuses on helping others and on developing relationships rather than on the self-absorbed perspective of the struggling writer . . . it is in the depiction of Beckett as Louis where this story comes most alive
A touching and thoughtful portrait