‘Glass has written a compassionate and quietly comic study of a country which has forgotten how to take pride in itself…Some novels deliberately courts our applause. This one doesn’t.’
Guardian
Hope for Newborns was Rodge’s second novel, first published by Faber & Faber in trade paperback in 2008, then in paperback in 2009.
‘A novel about family, responsibility, culture and community. Glass’s characterisation is excellent.’
Independent
Hope for Newborns in brief – from the Faber site:
Twenty-nine-year-old Lewis’s family are the definition of dysfunctional: his brothers, living estranged and unknown lives in Texas and Toronto, his mother, confined in her self-imposed silent state in a room full of fish and amphibians and his father, at work in the Victory Barber Shop where customers are surrounded by souvenirs of wartime Europe. And Lewis, caught between working at a recruitment agency, helping his father out in the barbers and keeping his mother in touch with world news.
But when he receives an email out of the blue from Christy, an old school friend, he is intrigued by her society for Hope for Newborns. Compared with the murkiness of home, the promises of her manifesto – freedom through friendship and love through sacrifice – appear so luminous, and the chance of romance so tangible.
More praise for Hope for Newborns:
‘Every once in a while, a book will come along that has the power to linger in the imagination – to keep gnawing away at you hours and days after you put it down. Such is the case with Hope for Newborns.’ Scotsman
‘Glass confirms he is an original and intriguing literary voice as well as a subtle and thoughtful writer.’ Big Issue
Rodge Glass 