You Can Live Forever

Book excerpt: 'Few disappointments compare to the loss of eternity...' Alice is going to live forever. She's been promised this since childhood. All she has to do is follow the true religion of The Unbelievable Potential of Human Beings. Her mother is a pillar of the church and her brother is a deacon. But Alice is faltering, she's losing the knack of living forever. Things aren't helped by her father William, a part-time arsonist, rejected husband, ladies' man and fraudster, or by Jude, an attractive fellow church-goer with a longing for womankind. In this intricate and satisfying debut, which was featured on BBC Radio 5 Live as Book of the Month, Julie Maxwell writes with dry, dark humour, wit and intelligence about sex and the sect and the heart of darkness. Winner of the Betty Trask Award.