Destiny

Three months after returning to England, Christopher Burton, receives a phone-call at the reception desk of the Rembrandt Hotel, Knightsbridge that informs him of his son's suicide. But why on receiving this terrible news, does Burton immediately decide that he must leave his Italian wife of thirty years standing? Why does he find it so difficult to focus on his grief for his son?

Intensely dramatic, dark and, against all odds, hilariously funny, Destiny is a satisfying story and a profound meditation on marriage and identity. Parks gives us a frightening experience of what it means to tread the narrow line between sanity and psychosis.

'This brilliant work fizzes with bleak humour and a crackpot energy…a powerfully affecting novel of married life and cultural incompatibility…Parks is an exceptionally acute observer of modern life' Daily Telegraph
'On any level, at every level, this novel is a dazzling and sustained tour-de-force…Easily the best of English fiction published so far this year, Destiny dissects the human comedy with equal measures of humanity and humour' Irish Times
'He can write, at will, like a modern Henry James, proceeding with composure through the labyrinth…Indeed, this is a novel that seems to exist on the brink, on the edge of insanity' Literary Review