The Room Of Lost Things

Under his railway arch in Loughborough Junction South London Robert Sutton is taking leave of a lifetime of hard work. His dry-cleaning shop lies at the heart of a lively community a fixed point in a changing world. And as he explains to his successor young East Londoner Akeel it is also the resting place for the contents of his customers' pockets - and for their secrets and lies. As he helps Akeel to make a new life out of his old one Robert also hands on all he knows of his world: the dirty dip of the Thames; the parks rare green oases in a desert of high-rises and decaying mansion blocks; and the varied lives that converge at the junction.

Humming with life packed tight with detail The Room of Lost Things is a hymn of love to a great and overflowing city and a profoundly human story that holds us in its grip from the first sentence until the last.