Will This House Last Forever?

By: Xanthi Barker

Narrated by: Xanthi Barker

When Xanthi Barker's father died when she was in her mid 20s, she could make no sense of her grief for a man who had been absent for most of her life. Her father, poet Sebastian Barker, had left Xanthi, her mother and her brother to pursue writing and a new relationship, when Xanthi was a baby. Growing up, she had always struggled to reconcile his extravagant affection - a rocking horse crafted from scavenged wood, the endless stream of poems and drawings and letters, conversations that spiralled from the structure of starlight to philosophy to Bruce Springsteen - with the fact that he could not be depended upon for more everyday things. Though theirs was a relationship defined by departures, he always returned, so why should this farewell be any different, or more final?

Will This House Last Forever? is a heartfelt and wholly original memoir about the pain of having to come to terms with a parent's mortality, the way grief so utterly defies logic and about learning to see the flaws in those that we love and let them go.

©2021 Xanthi Barker (P)2021 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Critic reviews

"It felt such a privilege to read this book. Raw, devastating, beautifully formed. Let's keep our eye on Barker." (Daisy Johnson)