David Gibb
David Gibb works in the shop at weekends. He is a sculptor but has also worked at Pan, Hatchards and André Deutsch. His cycle ride takes 25 to 29 minutes, but he lives further away than Tony or Jane.
Current reading
Sebastian Barry, A Long Long Way (Pb, £7.99)
This novel evokes the cruelty and sadness of war and also portrays the divided loyalties that many Irish soldiers felt from 1916 onwards. Willie Dunn and his regiment, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, get caught up in the events of the Easter Rising while on leave in Ireland. Sebastian Barry shows how this seminal political movement came to affect the soldiers who were fighting for the King of England on foreign fields and the paralysing doubts it caused them.
A favourite
Guy de Maupassant, Alien Hearts (Pb, £7.99)
This is Maupassant’s last, most original and most psychologically penetrating novel, set in Parisian high society at the end of the nineteenth century. André Mariolle, a rich, unmarried, aimless young man, is introduced to Madame de Burne, a dazzlingly beautiful widow who hosts an exclusive salon for artists and writers. Mariolle decides he is going to devote himself her and she encourages him, while remaining emotionally aloof. His frustration at her independent, modern ideas leads to an amicable break-up. In depression he exiles himself in the Forest of Fontainbleu where he meets Elizabeth, a hotel waitress. She in turn falls in love with him, but he is still devoted to Mme de Burne, who entices him back to Paris to continue their wounding relationship.