When I was thirteen, my father killed my mother . . .
How do you recover from something like that? Carol never quite does. Sent to live with her aunt, who barely tolerates her presence, Carol is grief-stricken, and all too aware she's not wanted. Desperate for love, but unable to ask for it, she nonetheless - and almost despite herself - finds it where she least expected.
Her Uncle Joey is the only one to notice her when she's a teenager; years later, he's also the man with whom she builds a home and a life. But when Carol helps to rescue a young refugee from the sea, that life suddenly threatens to unravel, just as surely as it did when she was thirteen.
Written in tight, spare prose, Little Monsters is a novel of creation, redemption and obsession; it's also the story of what it's like to experience the unthinkable - and what happens next.
'Charles Lambert is a seriously good writer' Beryl Bainbrdge
'Sharp like sherbert, poignant and gripping' Griff Rhys Jones
'With exquisitely tender writing and quiet authority, Little Monsters is a powerful debut' Jill Dawson
Charles Lambert was born in Lichfield, the United Kingdom, in 1953. After going to eight different schools in the Midlands and Derbyshire, he won a scholarship to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1972. In 1976 he moved to Milan and, with brief interruptions in Ireland, Portugal and London, has lived and worked in Italy since then. Currently a university teacher, academic translator and freelance editor for international agencies, he now lives in Fondi, exactly halfway between Rome and Naples.
