The Final Retreat: A Novel

The Final Retreat: A Novel

Stephen Hough
$20.00
Publication Date: June 15th, 2018
Publisher:
Sylph Editions
ISBN:
9781909631281
Pages:
180

Description

At the heart of The Final Retreat lies the question of how far the idea of a priest as a ‘wounded healer’ can be stretched. It is written as a diary-cum-memoir by Father Joseph, a middle-aged priest whose faith and life are in tatters, who is sent on an eight-day silent retreat by his kindly, sympathetic bishop. Apart from short daily meetings with a spiritual director, he speaks to no one. But he writes. Page after page, exploring the state of his soul, the loss of his vocation, his sexual addiction, and the events which are destroying his life.
 
Influenced by Stephen Hough’s other life as a concert pianist and composer, the book’s structure echoes a complex musical composition, with returning themes and motifs as the story unfolds. Melodies are hinted at rather than fully sung. Ideas are deliberately left incomplete. Hough leaves readers to fill in the blanks and experience the work through their own unique perspectives. Beautifully produced, The Final Retreat is a visual and creative masterpiece that will linger in the mind like a haunting melody. 
 

About the Author

Stephen Hough is a concert pianist, a composer and a writer. Named by the Economist as one of “20 Living Polymaths,” he was the first classical performer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2014. He has been written for the Times, Guardian, and  Daily Telegraph.
 

Praise for The Final Retreat: A Novel

"As well as performing and composing, the polymath has found time to write a novel about faith and desire."
— Financial Times

"Hough’s intermittently poetic prose is as precise as his music. He carefully paints a world of voracious desire and chronic loneliness, as the 60 short, tautly written chapters take us ever further into the protagonist’s mire. . . . Hough’s novel is important, brave, and controversial. It deserves to become a classic of its kind."
— Church Times

"[Hough] is, without a doubt, a contemporary Renaissance man, a rampant polymath, whose retiring countenance belies a mind that never sleeps, never ceases to create... Hough's debut novel... reflects a love of writing down words that has been with him as long as he's been able to hold a pen."
— The Scotsman