Brigand Press draws the attention of all readers of fiction to Philip Tew’s second book, Fragmentary Lives: Three Novellas, which charts the nuances and complexities of life at the end of the last millennium. Set in the 1980s and 1990s, these three narratives focus on two young men struggling with and surviving various relationships, particularly intimate ones with women. Both characters try hard to make sense of and find their place in a confusing, ever-changing world.

‘Another Long Weekend’ explores a divorced young man's visit to Norfolk in the early 1980s, where he meets Lauren, a potential romantic distraction. ‘Swimming the Goldfish Bowl’ traces Luke’s life in the mid-1990s as a doctoral student and the effect of encountering Lorraine, an attractive, unfamiliar woman from the wrong side of the tracks.   ‘After the Revolution (Failed to Materialize)’ charts the life of university lecturer, Jim Dent, in the 1990s, as he reflects on his troubles and considers the delusions of the hard-left, as his own political disillusionment grows following several chance encounters.

Philip’s first novel, Afterlives, is also available from Brigand. Martyn Colebrook wrote in a review in The Lady: “Afterlives will stay with the reader long after the final page has been turned. There are scenes in the book that are infused with tenderness, hilarity and a darkly comic streak. This is a deft debut from Philip Tew: memorable and touching, it leaves the reader waiting for more.” Well, Fragmentary Lives satisfies that very impulse to read more from Philip, since in it he continues the story of Jim Dent and several others like him!