A Game of Love and Hate

Joseph Root has been estranged from his family for most of his life. On hearing that his stepfather has died he returns home, determined to reclaim both his rightful place and his mother's love. In plotting to destroy his stepbrother he manipulates three young women. But this part-time libertine has feelings he doesn't want to own and can't control.

In this game of love and hate who is really winning? 'When I play with my cat, ' wrote Montaigne, 'how do I know she is not playing with me?' Root narrates his own unflinchingly honest story, taking the reader from London and rural Oxfordshire to Paris and the Ile d'Oleron on the Atlantic coast, from the Soho mansion of a Ukrainian gangster to the Covent Garden studios of London's actors and dancers.

His act of confession is also an elegant morality tale in which the line between revenge and redemption constantly shifts.