How Do People Stay the Same by Mark Bowles

Told as a series of journal entries that move backwards in time, this volume follows the life of Patrick Boyd - from the present-day contentment of family life and back to a darker, lonelier childhood. The book lays all of Patrick's experience before us, with the challenges of work, housing and all the other pinpricks of existence jostling with his complex inner world. It reveals a fragile man ground down by the world around him - but who might just be able to change and might just have the hope of a brighter future.