Today

August, 1924: John Conrad arrives at his parents' home on the outskirts of Canterbury, where family and friends are assembling for the bank holiday weekend. His crippled mother has been discharged from a nursing home, his brother drives down from London with wife and child. But as the guests converge, John's father dies. Today follows the numb implications of sudden death: the surprise, the shock, the deep fissures in a family exposed through grief. But there is also laughter, fraud, and theft; the continuation of life, all viewed through the eyes of Lilian Hallowes-John's father's secretary-never quite at the center of things but always observing, the still point in a turning world. Today is a remarkable debut, an investigation of bereavement, family, and Englishness, beautiful in its understatement and profound in its psychological acuity.