CONTACT

This is a startling breakthough novel from Jonathan Buckley, acclaimed author of "Ghost MacIndoe" and "So He Takes the Dog". It will be up for every prize going: a gripping, utterly compelling book whose themes hit home and hard for the baby boom generation. Dominic Pattison''s life is one of level contentment: his marriage has proved happy and durable; his business, too, is successful. And then Sam Williams, a builder and ex-squaddie, enters his life. Sam claims to be his son. Yet is Sam who he says he is? After almost thirty years, Dominic can remember little of the affair with Sam''s mother. His instinct is to recoil from this aggressive and volatile stranger, who could, with just a few words, take his life apart. But Sam refuses to be dismissed. With its deft switches of sympathy between menaced ''father'' and rebuffed ''son'' and its exploration of the intricacies of memory, "Contact" will resonate long with its readers.