The new work of fiction by the Costa-shortlisted author of Skin Lane.

Within the pages of this address book you will find not only names and places, but lives—with their everyday griefs and joys, and their everyday braveries.

A doctor revisits a formative sexual experience as he relocates in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. A dancing queen takes ownership of his life—and first flat—at the height of the AIDS epidemic. A photographer develops a defiant passion in a Victorian tenement. A civil partnership celebration lowers barriers in a high-rise housing development. A priest comes up against the Home Office. In the sixties, an expectant mother comes to accept a queer neighbour. Fifty years later, a widower comes to terms with the loss of a life partner.

Seven different times. Seven different situations. Seven different characters, each seeking to feel at home—somewhere or with someone. Let Bartlett lead you surefootedly between lives and locations, through decades of change to find hope in the strangest of places.