A Kestrel for a Knave
A Man's Place
Amy Liptrot
And When Did You Last See Your Father?
Annie Ernaux
Barry Hines
Blake Morrison
Category=FC
Category=FXD
Category=JBSC
Category=WN
Conduit Books
Cumbria
debut novel
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Fledgling
forthcoming
Grief is the Thing with Feathers
JM Coetzee
Josh Holton
Max Porter
nature writing
Patrimony
Philip Roth
Streetcake Experimental Writing Prize
Summertime
The Outrun
working-class author
Writers' and Artists' Working Class Writers' Prize
Product details
- ISBN 9781919184746
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 17 Sep 2026
- Publisher: Conduit Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Stuart is raised on a nature reserve in Cumbria; his family is poor. Stuart is sensitive – endlessly bullied in school, he believes in magic and feels more comfortable taking dance class than playing football. Stuart grows up straddling two worlds, becoming the first in his family to go to university. His father, an ex-con, is quick to throw a punch, and won't eat anything in public ‘more flamboyant than a ploughman's’ in case someone would take him for a ‘nancy-boy’. An avid birdwatcher, he has found peace in his new life as a caretaker for a nature reserve.
When his father is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Stuart grapples with grief as he tries to become the man he thinks his father would want him to be. Interwoven in the narrative are snippets of British wildlife, particularly the birds that captivate Stuart and his father, and reflect the bond they share.
The writing is surprising, hilarious, and devastating. This is a story about grief, about masculinity, about the love of a parent and what remains when they're gone.
When his father is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Stuart grapples with grief as he tries to become the man he thinks his father would want him to be. Interwoven in the narrative are snippets of British wildlife, particularly the birds that captivate Stuart and his father, and reflect the bond they share.
The writing is surprising, hilarious, and devastating. This is a story about grief, about masculinity, about the love of a parent and what remains when they're gone.
Josh Holton is an ex-MMA fighter who took too many blows to the head and now writes and draws the unexpected. He placed in Streetcake’s Experimental Writing Prize 2021, and was runner up in the Writers’ and Artists’ Working Class Writers’ Prize 2020. Fledgling is his first novel.
