The Roundabout Man

2012 | Fiction & Poetry

Who is the Roundabout Man? He doesn't look like a tramp, yet he lives on a roundabout in a caravan and survives on the leftovers from a nearby motorway service station. He calls himself Quinn, the name of a boy in a world-famous series of children's books, but he's nearer retirement than childhood. What he hopes no one will discover is that he's the real Quinn, immortalised as a child by his mother in her entrancing tales about a little boy's adventures with his triplet sisters. It is this inheritance he has successfully run away from - until now. When Quinn's reclusive existence is invaded, he has to turn and face his past, and all the uncomfortable truths it contains about himself, his sisters and, most of all, his mother. By the author of Astonishing Splashes of Colour and The Man Who Disappeared, The Roundabout Man delivers a wittily observed slice of modern life as it plumbs the gulf between nostalgia and reality.

Clare Morrall (Author)