‘February’s Son is an excellent sequel — full of surprises, streaked with compassion — that highlights the art of tartan noir. McCoy, trying to work out “what’s right and what’s wrong”, and Cooper, who just does “what has to be done”, make one hell of a damaged duo.’
Mark Sanderson
Evening Standard
“I do not know how she has survived until now. I do not know how I have survived either, come to think of it. I have just kept going. I have paid the right price. I have continued to live. Now, we will survive together. I will be her Mother, and she will be my Monster.”
“The sea, as the Baron saw from the geographer's charts, was far away. But above all – he saw in his dreams – it was terrible, exaggeratedly beautiful, terribly powerful, inhuman and inmical: marvellous.”
“The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, th privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another.”
“I, Dr Whytlaw III, the first and last word on white people, the alpha and omega of the White Man, will usher you safely through the woods. Have no fear. Walk with me.”
“When Aada started her new school, the pixie came too. But this school was a place, where it was hard to be true.”
“He can feel the river's presence on his right. It never leaves him; it is there, always, on the edge of his consciousness. Even in sleep, it flows through his dreams, watching, waiting, coaxing his attention to something he cannot fathom.”
“Pity the small backs of children, he heard her saying. They carry death for us the second they are born.”
“We are all swimmers before the dawn of oxygen and earth. We all carry the memory of that breathable blue past.”
“Maybe food really is the simplest way for people anywhere to share with each other. Eating is the one universal, daily activity that underpins human life. However much or little we think about it, food is a force – and shared its power may be amplified.”
“Here is everything I know about almost everything, that i think applies to almost everyone, that might help you someday.”
“Amsterdam – the dangerous city; I watched, I listened, I breathed. The sun bounces off the canals; the smell of herrings, of whatever people throw into them, and of rats.”
“Shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts.”
“The reason Evie was special is that she had an Ability. The Ability had a capital A because it was a very important ability. She could communicate with animals.”
“Just when we think all the ladders between heaven and earth have fallen down we discover that our own heart, after all, has been the source of our greatest insights. That’s where all ladders start.”
“I was a man, that much was clear. But, years after I became one, I still wondered what, exactly, that meant.”
“The tarp and the hunting knife and the kettle frame and even Peppa's walking trainers all came in the post, all got on Amazon and all with the nicked cards Robert brought back with him and kept in the bedside drawer.”
“My problem is sex, or if it isn’t, sex hides the problem so completely that I don’t know what it is. I want revenge on a woman who is not real”
