Hardcover. London, Picador, 1st UK, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Ever After is a rumination on death, faith, and finding meaning in life more than a proper novel. The narrator, Bill Unwin, is recovering from a failed suicide. His convalescence is used to muse over the fate of the father he never knew, and who may not even have been his father, and the ravings of his hedonistic mother over the vanity of posterity. Meanwhile, he is withholding the manuscript of one of his Victorian ancestors from a fellow Cambridge don, a vain, publicity-seeking but successful rival. This is finally the motive for a second, parallel plot, in many ways the more interesting, about the Victorian in forebear in question, Matthew Pearce. For Pearce, surveyor, amateur fossil-collector, and son-in-law to the local parson, is a man of his age, scientifically inclined yet religious. Lyell, Darwin cannot fail to attract Pearce, yet they also threaten his marriage and family, his very social standing. Clean copy.
