A temporary life

Colin Freestone, a former professional boxer who now paints, follows his wife back to her hometown in the north of England after she suffers a breakdown. He accepts a teaching post at the local art school, where he meets a range of staff and students. The novel is narrated in the first person and records a short, unsettled stretch of his life there.

The school is dominated by R. N. "Skipper" Wilcox, the most comic figure in Storey's fiction, for whom food, art, the past and his own eccentric appetites are closely bound together. The Newmans also arrive in town, supposedly to reshape it. Elizabeth Newman is looking for pleasure, her daughter Rebecca for experience, and Neville Newman, a city planner, for authority and power, which he pursues with a sinister group of followers. Freestone's wife remains a troubling presence throughout.

The story moves in a restless, sometimes uncontrollable pattern, shifting between comedy, tragedy and shock. It builds toward a climax that reflects the lives of everyone involved and reworks them, much as a work of art might. David Storey, the author, was also a playwright and a former professional rugby league player.