Mother’s Boy
PATRICK GALE
(Tinder Press, 416 PP, £20)
Tablet bookshop price £18 • tel 020 7799 4064

The Cornish poet Charles Causley, born 1917, was known to generations of schoolchildren, his shrewd humour and mastery of poetic form making him a staple of the English curriculum for decades. In his later years he became a notable literary figure and a friend of Ted Hughes, but unlike the younger poet seemed to lead a life devoid of emotional upheavals. An only child, he never married, had no children and for many years lived alone with his mother, Laura. Basing his latest novel on the formative years of Causley’s seemingly uneventful life, Patrick Gale has delved under the apparently tranquil surface to offer a new perspective on this shy, reclusive writer.