When big-boned, eager-to-please, accident-prone Taras Krohe ambles into a stiff English public school on a puzzling scholarship with his funny foreign name, an eccentric and over-protective Bukovinian mother, and no father at all, disappointment beckons. A decade later, Taras and his mother are still living off their benefactress Mrs Bartlett in a cramped South London flat, while Taras's promising job has warped into a Kafkaesque nightmare, and his truculent Russian girlfriend has decamped with a ponytailed aesthete. When the mysterious Mrs Bartlett dies, an old schoolfriend with a grudge emerges and eviction looms. Now even the terminally easygoing Taras must show his mother he's a man, and uncover the secret behind his family's plummet into disaster. But she has other ideas for her little pourchi: she's determined to wrestle him away from the dangerous influences his search reveals. And it's by no means certain who will come out on top ...

Author Biography

Penny Rudge is doing a three year PhD in Creative Writing with Andrew Motion at Royal Holloway. She is married and has a young family.