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Coat With Long Sleeves
What would you do if you lost your wife and kids and somebody took away your job in the company you’d started? If there was nothing left of your old life and your new one held only solitude and isolation? And you shut yourself away. You became a pariah. People hated and despised you, and they feared you with good reason. And then you found something that shouldn’t have been there, that you couldn’t explain. An ancient relic from a forgotten age of witchcraft and superstition, but ultimately from a time when the natural world was a part of the way we lived. And you thought that someone should know about it because it just might change everything. For ever. What would you do?
Geoff Duck’s protagonist is that failed Tech entrepreneur who retreats to the family’s holiday home in rural North Devon when things go pear-shaped; who endures breakdown and seclusion for twenty years until he chances upon the mysterious artefact that he realises has lain untouched for half a millennium.
This novel explores what happens when you have too much time on your hands for your own good. It looks at disconnects with society, with nature, with traditional ways and perhaps with sanity as the protagonist attempts to unravel the true meaning of what he has found and reconcile it with the modern world.
Geoff Duck’s protagonist is that failed Tech entrepreneur who retreats to the family’s holiday home in rural North Devon when things go pear-shaped; who endures breakdown and seclusion for twenty years until he chances upon the mysterious artefact that he realises has lain untouched for half a millennium.
This novel explores what happens when you have too much time on your hands for your own good. It looks at disconnects with society, with nature, with traditional ways and perhaps with sanity as the protagonist attempts to unravel the true meaning of what he has found and reconcile it with the modern world.
529 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 11, 2020
13 people want to read
About the author
Geoff Duck
2 books3 followersGeoff Duck was born in Bristol in 1954 and grew up in a thirties semi in what was then a genteel suburb. He was part of the first cohort to sample the comprehensive system and eventually ended up with a PhD in Digital Signal Processing many years later.
A comfortable academic career beckoned, but on a whim, he and a colleague spun out a fledgling technology company focused on their research. It was a wily move. The telecommunications industry was humming and a very sexy place to be. The company grew into a global player in its specialist niche.
Exiting just before the dot-com bubble burst, Dr Duck unexpectedly found himself embracing family life. He was in no hurry to return to the frenzy, being after all, something of an accidental entrepreneur. He bought some land and planted trees. Lots of trees. He found an ancient farmhouse that needed a little work to bring it back to life and when it was done and his three children had left school, he 'retired' to his family roots in North Devon with his wife and they now live in one of the barns in the middle of the countryside looking out over Exmoor and not much else.
He spends his time reading, gardening and walking and now indulges himself with creative writing. Coat with long sleeves, his debut novel, is the result. It has dark moments, but it also has English folklore, green men, nature, the retreat of nature, trees and woodland, ancient vernacular buildings, country churches and pubs. It also has the unexpected.
A comfortable academic career beckoned, but on a whim, he and a colleague spun out a fledgling technology company focused on their research. It was a wily move. The telecommunications industry was humming and a very sexy place to be. The company grew into a global player in its specialist niche.
Exiting just before the dot-com bubble burst, Dr Duck unexpectedly found himself embracing family life. He was in no hurry to return to the frenzy, being after all, something of an accidental entrepreneur. He bought some land and planted trees. Lots of trees. He found an ancient farmhouse that needed a little work to bring it back to life and when it was done and his three children had left school, he 'retired' to his family roots in North Devon with his wife and they now live in one of the barns in the middle of the countryside looking out over Exmoor and not much else.
He spends his time reading, gardening and walking and now indulges himself with creative writing. Coat with long sleeves, his debut novel, is the result. It has dark moments, but it also has English folklore, green men, nature, the retreat of nature, trees and woodland, ancient vernacular buildings, country churches and pubs. It also has the unexpected.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 11, 2020
Enjoyable read, full of graphic description and a fair dollop of philosophy. A strange plot line made up of lots of different events but through the oddness the hero/anti-hero character is well developed. I liked the author's appreciation for nature and wonder if he went on many night-time excursions himself? Anyway, I would recommend this to anyone, a refreshing change from the mainstream.
May 14, 2021
Fascinating look at mental breakdown with pagan magic thrown in. Very dark in places. Well written and he actually makes you care about a protagonist who is thoroughly nasty at times.
November 13, 2020
This is probably the most extraordinary book that I have read this year - and I have read a lot of books in the last 12 months. Completely unique, chilling and fascinating, I simply could not put it down. Yes it is a first novel and it may not be the polished and professional work that more accomplished authors could have turned out but that is exactly why it is such a brilliant read, by the narrator's own admission, he gets things wrong and Boy! does he get things wrong both in life and the narrative. I guarantee that this will change your view of Devon and other remote country villages but at the same time its intimate portrayal of the natural world especially at night will have you heading out after midnight to sit and listen to the hidden night sounds and really look at the dark.
I am so glad that my attention was caught by this strange, eccentric and compelling novel. I really hope lots of others read it too.
I am so glad that my attention was caught by this strange, eccentric and compelling novel. I really hope lots of others read it too.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews