I’m a huge fan of Tony Parsons however I wasn’t a huge fan of Tony-Parsons-goes-tropical in his ninth novel, Catching the Sun.
After a string of events in Britain, taxi driver Tom Finn takes his wife and children to live on the tropical island of Phuket, Thailand. Initially, it’s all the family dreamed of – a tropical paradise where they live simply, with the beach at their doorstep. But both man-made and natural disasters shatter their tropical idyll and the family are forced to reconsider their definition of ‘paradise’.
When I think about Parsons, I think London streets, complex relationships, men trying to do the right thing. To a certain extent, these themes are picked up in Catching the Sun however without the dirty concrete, rain and lagers, the story never quite convinced me. Continue reading