Publisher's Synopsis
The Life of Almost is a dark comedy set in Wales and a spectral reworking of Dickens's Great Expectations.
Almost is a boy, brought up by his sister, Perfection. He is shrouded by bereavement and surrounded by the hauntings of his family's undead. He plays in the sea caves, visits graves, amongst mermaids, longing mermen, morticians, houses that breathe and a poltergeist moss that grabs your foot. A cast of family and friends drawn from sea caves, the embalming table, the graveyard and the dark Clandestine House, which respires heavily and in which time has stopped.
Like Dickens' Pip, Almost sings into the sea and likes to tell stories. He is thwarted in love but understands - on the night he meets a ragged convict, for the convict is a merman, come on land - that he has deep and commanding powers.
