Everything's Basically Fine

Being shot at by terrorists on your commute home is a bad thing, that's obvious. If your crippling anxiety means that you're the sort of person who really dwells on such things, well, that's even worse. But what if you've let go of your anger, if you're trying to make your peace with a turbulent world and let it all wash over you? Then everything's basically fine, isn't it?This is a tale of unpicking life and shuffling it into order; of one man's struggle to come to terms with the loss of his mother and the emotional carnage of his father ... a tale that carries him from London to the south of France, via 1960s Alabama, 1830s Dorset, back to the Deep South before returning to Waterloo Bridge, ricocheting across the globe and the centuries trying to make sense of reality. It's a story of deep-seated anxiety, hope, feminism, terrorism, glimpses of joy and further anxiety; of how everything could be fine, but maybe it doesn't need to be.