Stepping Out

by Steven Boykey Sidley

Harold Cummings has led a good life – honest, cautious, prudent.
Now retired, financially secure and terminally bored, he asks himself –
where are my rewards? When his wife Millie is called away for a few days
Harold slowly begins to unravel. Starting with small incidents of risky
and uncharacteristic behaviour, he quickly spirals into a no-holds-barred
encounter with the seamy underworld of the city he calls home. Harold
careens shockingly and comically into a world without handrails, one
that he finds terrifying but strangely compelling. As he is drawn into the
ambit of a young hooker and her child, and into encounters with drug
dealers and a violent pimp, Harold is forced to confront his demons head
on. He must find the means to reverse his slide into self-destruction and
rediscover grace in the choices he has made.
By turns funny, sad, chilling and provocative, Stepping Out continues
the dark and humorous intellectual explorations of Sidley’s acclaimed
debut novel, Entanglement.

248 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 26, 2013

About the author

Award-winning and multi-shortlisted novelist STEVEN BOYKEY SIDLEY has
meandered through careers as an animator, chief technology officer for a
Fortune 500 company, jazz musician, software developer, video game
designer, private equity investor and high technology entrepreneur. He has written 4 novels, with a 5th to be published August 2019. Sidley's writing has been variously compared by reviewers to Philip Roth (Elle), Martin Amis (Rene Montagne, NPR) and John Power (Booklist)

2013 - Winner of UJ Debut Fiction Award for Entanglement (Picador SA)
2013 - Shortlisted for Sunday Times Fiction Prize for Entanglement
2013 - Shortlisted for MNet Literary Award for Entanglement
2014 - Shortlisted for UJ Main Fiction Award for Stepping Out
2015 - Longlisted for Sunday Times Fiction Prize for Imperfect Solo
October 2015 - Imperfect Solo (Belfond translation) selected for Le Grand
Livre du Mois, France's most prestigious national literary book club
2017 - Free Association published by Picador SA and sold to Belfond, France
2018 - Invited to perform Telling Stories, a one-man show, at William
Kentridge Centre for the Less Good Idea
2019 - Launch of Imperfect Solo in the US
2019 - Launch of Leaving Word in SA (August)

Reviews

[Margaret Crampton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book! The writer has such a way with words! In his seventies Harold Cummings, the staid, conservative guy. He has lived a steady reliable boring life as an engineer now retired from a company making plumbing equipment … quite uncharacteristically and surprising goes off the rails! His wife Millie of 30 years is away for a couple of weeks visiting her sister. He questions everything he has believed in and gets drunk, takes drugs, visits the seedy side of town falls for a young prostitute,has a tattoo, gets into a fight! And meantime Millie, the devoted stay at home wife, has been secretly having an affair for years in her sister’s town.. And when Millie comes home… This book is highly recommended

[Ray Hartley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work of precise and uncluttered writing takes you on a journey with an unlikely rebel. Retired after a life of living by the rules, Harold Cummings takes advantage of his wife's absence to break out of his safe existence and search of the rough grit of reality. The resolution of this post-midlife crisis explores what it means to be alive, to test the boundaries that accumulate as a predictable life progresses to its predictable end. The journey ends with an examination of what it means to be honest, to be a hero. Absolutely loved it.

[Kate Sidley · Rating 4 out of 5]

OK, so my husband wrote it. But it is a smart, surprising, engaging book nonetheless.

[Artemissia G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je dois dire que je ne savais pas trop à quoi m’attendre avec ce titre. Ma rencontre avec Harold fut une belle surprise couplé d’une aventure pleine de folie insensée. Après avoir été à l’enterrement de son ex-meilleur ami de fac, le vieil Harold Cummings fait une rétrospective juste et cynique sur sa vie passée avec sa douce épouse, Millie. Le constat est là, effrayant : rien d’extraordinaire à l’horizon. Alors, Harold n’a pas pris de coca cola pour décider de se payer une seconde jeunesse (vous savez la pub avec le vieillard qui fait les pires folies…). Harold n’a plus rien à perdre, sa vie est derrière lui, mais cela le mine alors il décide de remédier à cela et ses coups de folies lui offriront une seconde jeunesse inespérée ! (...) La plume de Steven Boykey Sidley est prenante, acidulée et cash. Il n’y a pas de censure et l’on suit le vieil homme avec curiosité, amusement et… la gorge serrée aussi.

Ma chronique complète : https://songedunenuitdete.com/2019/01...

[Neal Sarlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the first sentence to the last page, one is drawn in Harold's life and his willingness to be swept into adventure. The chapters are short, easy to read yet filled with layers. I can identify with the frustration of Harold's ageing and why he wants to 'step out' of his mediocre existence. Mr Sidley please accept my apologies for letting your book lie in my to read pile for so long.