West Coast - Softcover

London, 2000

Fergus MacFarlane is a celebrated and celebrity Brit Art photographer partying in the heat of Noughties London. One night he returns to his beautiful house and his beautiful wife to discover ugly cracks in his life: he's falling apart, sleeping around and selling out. His past and his present are catching up with him. Who is he really? How did he get here?

Scotland, 1978

Fergus is eight when his fisherman father drowns off the West Coast of Scotland. He is left in a damp tenement with his mother - and her resentment. The worst of the Seventies has hit the port of Burnoch: Leo Sayer, shagpile carpet, and Irn Bru for breakfast. In the wild landscape, Fergus searches for horizons beyond the narrow ones of the town and a way out.

Follow Fergus from scabby-kneed schoolboy to ambitious artist, from a squat to a mansion, from rent boys to an aristocratic marriage, from Hebridean islands to Hoxton galleries, from Presbyterianism to hedonism. It's a journey through tragedy and comedy, haggis and sushi. Why did Fergus run from his past? And how does he get back?

Kate Muir's unputdownable new novel is for everyone who ever lost their roots, and set out to find them again.