Completion - Tapa dura

"A most impressive, assured and enjoyable debut." (James Kidd Independent)

"Very funny...Walker [has a] flair for scene-setting." (Guardian)

"[A] sharply written, shrewdly observed, satirically funny look at the middle-class obsession with property, the dream that has turned into a nightmare for a generation." (Herald)

"Completion is a witty, deftly-written portrait of a dysfunctional family in contemporary Britain. Revealing about the young: uncomfortably acute about their parents." (Spectator, Books of the Year)

"Clever idea: Tim Walker’s adroit debut novel tells the story of a scattered London family through their relationship to their Highbury home. This is a story of the rampant property mania that dominates the national conversation and an acute satire on urban First World problems. It’s wittily done...Walker imagines himself equally confidently into the minds of a rich retiree, an expat mum and a Shoreditch hipster...So timely...Walker’s characters are fully fleshed...[and] there are lots of nice touches...This is a proper London novel, and properly good fun." (Evening Standard)

A sharp, sardonic, perceptive and painfully funny book about money, love and the sorrows and joys of modern family life by a talented debut author. Set in our age of property obsession, Completion is a state-of-the-nation novel about valuing the wrong things, investing in the wrong people, and whether home is ever really a house.

The Manvilles’ North London home was once an example to their peers: the subject of ‘The House on the Hill’, Pen’s series of popular children’s books, and a recurring feature of the newspaper lifestyle sections. But since Pen and Jerry’s divorce, the house has fallen out of use, and so has the family.

Jerry, formerly an award-winning ad-man, is beginning to leave a trail of ex-wives and semi-estranged children across the city. In the south of France, Pen has perfected her garden, but her new marriage comes as more of a struggle. In the tedious heat of Dubai, their daughter Isobel, an accidental ex-pat, spends the days ignoring her own children and managing her online virtual farm. And in his grotty flat in deepest East London, her brother Conrad cleans his bicycles and wonders what to do with his life – besides pursuing his latest crush.

When Pen decides it’s finally time to sell the house, Jerry discovers some unexpected new occupants who violently disagree. Soon, the Manvilles – each of them funny, flawed and sporadically lovable – will have to say goodbye to The House on the Hill.