The Bounce

THE BOUNCE is a masterpiece of lion-taming cross-dressing lost mothers and lost innocence set in the glamorous and squalid world of the Victorian circus. Nineteen-year-old Nathan sails the Atlantic in search of the mother who abandoned him. He takes a job as a lion-tamer in a circus south of the Thames where he meets Lulu a celebrated rope-dancer with secrets; Nan the orange-girl haunted by her dead son and his menacing father; Queen the lion on whom everything rests and at last his mother - or is she his mother after all?

Like BONE HOUSE THE BOUNCE is pacy darkly Gothic and powerfully evocative but its setting and the characters elevate it to a new level: literary historical fiction at its spine-tingling compelling best.