Spill Simmer Falter Wither

This book is longlisted for the guardian first book award. You find me on a Tuesday, on my Tuesday trip to town. A note sellotaped to the inside of the jumble-shop window: compassionate & tolerant owner. A person without other pets & without children under four.
A misfit man finds a misfit dog. Ray, aged fifty-seven, ‘too old for starting over, too young for giving up’, and One Eye, a vicious little bugger, smaller than expected, a good ratter. Both are accustomed to being alone, unloved, outcast – but they quickly find in each other a strange companionship of sorts. As spring turns to summer, their relationship grows and intensifies, until a savage act forces them to abandon the precarious life they’d established, and take to the road.