GIL ADAMSON

Help Me, Jacques Cousteau presents the life and times of Hazel and her brother Andrew, who are born into an extraordinary family of modern-day eccentrics. It is through Hazel's observant but detached eyes that we watch the family's goings-on, her unflinching vision informed by the precocious perception that however bad things may be they are only likely to get worse. She watches with bemusement as they go through the rituals of a Christmas dinner that culminates in attending the funeral of a man not one of them knew, and of a wedding that ends with the bride storming out. She senses that her mismatched parents, narcoleptic and impractical North and prosaic Janey, are headed for a rupture but is content to let things unravel in their own ineluctable fashion. Hazel's younger brother Andrew shows signs of following in the family's unconventional footsteps with his addiction to TV, his bizarre questions ('If you had to kill your best friend or your parents, which would it be?'), and his strange inventions, like solar-powered curtains. Yet however odd and even slightly menacing the world inhabited by these fully-fleshed characters, there is an unnerving familiarity to their dilemmas and discordancies that makes the stories resonate with conviction. This funny and poignant portrait of an offbeat family showcases Adamson's powerful prose, which uniquely combines a scientist's attention to detail, a comic's delivery and a poet's ear.

Adamson''s debut work is simply enough, a superb novel. . . . The frayed material of the North American west is rendered in an astoundingly fresh light. . . . a condition only occasioned by first rat

Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Winner of the International Association of Crime Writers Dashiell Hammett Prize, Longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.