Oxygen

Alice Valentine is dying of cancer in her house in the West Country, cared for by her younger son Alec, an unmarried translator shaped by fear of his late, violent father. In San Francisco her elder son Larry, a fading soap-opera actor in a failing marriage, drifts into pornographic films to pay his way home. In Paris the Hungarian émigré playwright László Lázár, comfortable with his young lover, cannot escape memories of the 1956 uprising and is drawn into a political mission to Budapest. What links them is Alec's work translating László's new play, about three men trapped in a collapsed mine. Each of them reaches a point where he or she must decide what matters and how to break free.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

United Kingdom, United States, France, Hungary, 1997

First published

2001

Author's age

41 when first published

ISBN

9780151007219 (Harcourt, United States)

9780340728253 (Sceptre, United Kingdom)

9780156027403 (Harvest Books, United States)

9780340728260 (Sceptre, United Kingdom)

More

Wikidata