Skylark Lounge

In the middle of his life, Jack Grout found himself abducted by aliens. There were other things. His wife left him. His son came one night to the Skylark Lounge – the pool hall Jack bought after throwing in his job in newspaper advertising – and punched him. And there was the mistreatment for melanoma. But what Jack really needed to know was why the aliens, who had first taken him when he was nine years old and shown him his life in unbearably vivid close-up, had returned.

'What is great about this novel – and this is a novel with greatness – is that it takes Jack Grout’s solipsistic sense of singularity, and makes that sense serve a tender meditation on the beauty of human consciousness. . . . Skylark Lounge is my favourite of Nigel Cox’s books.' —Elizabeth Knox