Author(s): Thewlis David

Fiction

Hector Kipling has everything to live for: he is a talented artist with loving parents, a beautiful girlfriend, dependable mates and good health. But when Kirk Church, one of his best friends, and an habitual painter of cutlery, announces that he may have a brain tumour, the prospect of a character-building bereavement, with all the attendant suffering and sympathy, is a little too difficult for Hector to resist. Will it make him a better artist? Will it make him as successful as his oldest, baldest friend, Lenny Snook, who fills limousines with blood and has just been nominated for the Turner Prize?As events begin to unravel it doesn't take long for Hector's charmed world to fall completely and irreparably apart. From settees to stalkers, con men to corpses, paranoid self-portraits to S&M, "The Late Hector Kipling" traces Hector's journey from the dizzying heights of solo shows to a deep hole in the floor of the Tate Gallery. It is an irreverent and candid exploration of life, death, art and everything in between. 'An accomplished debut ...Thewlis ...has successfully transferred his talents to the page, displaying a sharp ear for dialogue and a scabrously satiric prose style reminiscent of Howard Jacobson' - "Daily Mail".