Fallout

Luke Kanowski is a young playwright: intense, magnetic, fleeing a disastrous upbringing in the North East. Arriving in London, he meets Paul Driscoll, an aspiring producer, and beautiful, fiery Leigh Radley, the girl Paul loves. Luke, Paul and Leigh set up a radical theatre company, living and working together, forging a connection in the smoky late nights of Chelsea's run-down flats and damp rehearsal rooms above pubs, candlelit during power cuts, where a new generation of writers and directors is fighting for its place.

Nina Jacobs is a fragile actress, bullied by her mother and in thrall to a controlling producer. When Luke meets Nina he recognizes a soul in danger, and loyalty, friendship, everything he has fought for, is drawn into the heat of their collision. As Luke ricochets between honesty and deceit, the promise of the future and his own painful past, suddenly the fallout threatens to be immense.

Fallout is an elegantly crafted novel that brings us firmly into the psyche of romantic love, its sickness and its ecstasy.