Christopher Burton, the protagonist of this masterful novel, is one of
Britain's foremost foreign correspondents, the acknowledged world expert
on Italian affairs. Three months after returning to London with his
Italian wife for an extended stay, Burton receives a phone call at the
reception desk of his hotel informing him that his teenage son has
committed suicide. Why, upon receiving this terrible news, does he
immediately conclude that his marriage of almost thirty years is over?
And why is grief so slow in coming? Burton feels his pious, mercurial
wife may have given him his life in Italy--even his prestigious
career--but she has also made it impossible. Was their troubled son
somehow the victim of their long, explosive love-hate relationship?
Looking back, Burton sees in his life a web of contradictions,
unanswered questions, and confusions. And yet, it has been his destiny.
Intensely dramatic, dark, and yet often hilariously funny, Destiny is
a seamless, beautifully plotted story and a profound meditation on
marriage and identity. Parks offers us a searing account of what it
means to tread the narrow line between sanity and psychosis.
