by EJ Pepper
FLIGHT PATH
‘A before and an after. With any crisis, it is the same. One moment, things are going along much as they have always done. A satisfying balance. And in the next, an event threatens to destroy everything you have ever worked or cared for. The world tilts. All your bearings are gone.
So at what point do you stop agonising over what you might have done differently? At what point can you relax, safe in the knowledge that it is truly over?’
When sixty-two year old Miles Whittaker, a teacher at a minor public school, is accused of bullying a pupil, he and his wife are asked to leave while the school board try to ascertain the truth.
Miles, shocked and disorientated, finds adapting to life in a run-down part of London almost impossible, but his wife Sophie’s deepest concern is for the affect this accusation will have on her twin girls, now at university.
As Miles buries his head in the sand, it is up to Sophie to hold the family together, while she questions just how well she knows her husband of thirty years’ standing.
‘It is rare to read a novel that is as gripping as it is subtle. Flight Path is that novel. Buried within the story of a marriage coming undone is a compelling exploration of our moral and sexual confusions – and of one of our worst fears: that of the predator. E. J. Pepper delivers a disquieting, absorbing story.
Alison MacLeod
Booker prize long-listed author of Unexploded.
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Sensitively written and highly topical, this is a brilliant portrayal of two worlds colliding, and the far-reaching effects this type of accusation can have.’
Exeter Novel Prize
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