The Book of Guardians is a detective story about orphans – how we care for them and how we are likely to become orphans. A man investigating a child’s origins, after the mother claims the child’s father to be God, comes to question his own life. It’s a book about memory, about the gaps in the stories we tell to ourselves about who we are – and how those gaps can come to haunt us –

 

‘a remarkable debut. The Book of Guardians is an often touching examination of the philosophy of ‘care’, which tackles head-on the alienation and uncertainty of contemporary lives.’ – Victor Sage.

 

‘grips the reader from the start, fearlessly delving into our secret selves. Its discoveries are unsettling and sometimes macabre, the writing audacious and eloquent.’  – Linda Anderson

 

‘Neale has taken the great theme of the Victorians – orphan-hood – and produced a subtle and engaging romance of childhood and identity, a story of the quest for origins and the torments of memory, and of the startlingly random connections between the abandoned and the secure which weave the texture of a life in our times.’ – Victor Sage

 

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