The Honeymoon

Book excerpt: A young American’s life in Europe comes apart in this Man Booker Prize long-listed debut with “echoes of Ford Madox Ford and F. Scott Fitzgerald” (Tom Penn, The Times Literary Supplement, UK). Set in London and Venice at the end of the twentieth century, The Honeymoon follows a young man’s journey into his own past and the strange events that caused his life to unravel. American-born Gordon Garraty spent much of his childhood traveling through the capitals of Europe with his eccentric mother Maureen. As Maureen worked on her interminable art guide, Gordon recorded their journeys with his camera. Only later, while working in London as a freelance photographer, did Gordon begin to emerge from his mother’s influence—and meet Annie. Several years his senior and the daughter of a North London cabbie, Annie is Gordon’s first love—and after a dizzying courtship, his wife. But when they take a honeymoon in Venice, Gordon and Annie are accompanied by Maureen and her new Swiss fiancé. The brilliance of the city seems to distort rather than illuminate. Jealousy, suspicion, and conflicting desires rise to a palpable intensity before a single act of absurd but devastating violence lays bare the emptiness at the core of their gilded lives. A deeply observant and expertly crafted tale, “The Honeymoon looks askance upon the beautiful and splendid, plumbing the stilted emotional depths of two wayward Americans who appear to have arrived via Henry James into the late 1980’s” (Los Angeles Times).