2004 Man Booker Prize Shortlist

Information and Book Review

I'll Go to Bed at Noon
General Information
	I'll Go to Bed at Noon by Gerard Woodward Published by Chatto & Windus UK Publication Date: 7/1/04
About the Author
	Gerard Woodward was born in London in December, 1961. His first novel, August, was published in 2001 to great acclaim and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award. He has also written three award-winning collections of poetry. Both novels August and I'll Go To Bed At Noon draw heavily from Gerard Woodward's own personal family history. August focuses on his mother's increasing dependency on glue and his second novel I'll Go To Bed At Noon concentrates on his brother, a gifted musician who is taken out of school early to study at the Royal Academy of Music. Gerard Woodward lives in Bath.
Publisher's Comments	Colette Jones has had drink problems in the past, but now it seems as though her whole family is in danger of turning to alcohol. Her oldest son has thrown away a promising musical career for a job behind the counter in builders' merchants, and his drinking sprees with his brother-in-law Bill, a pseudo-Marxist supermarket butcher who seems to see alcohol as central to the proletarian revolution, have started to land him in trouble with the police. Meanwhile Colette's recently widowered older brother is following an equally self-destructive path, having knocked back an entire cellar of homemade wine, he's now on the gin, a bottle a day and counting. Who will be next? Her youngest son had decided to run away to sea, but when her own husband hits the bottle Colette realises she has to act. As the pressure builds on Colette to cope with these damaged people, her own weaknesses begin to emerge, and become crucial to the outcome of all their lives.
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