Patrick Gale Biography

British novelist, born on the Isle of Wight, educated at Winchester and at New College, Oxford. His first novel, The Aerodynamics of Pork (1986), was followed by Ease (1986), and Kansas in August (1987), a romantic comedy involving a young gay man, his sister, and the lover they both share. Other novels include Facing the Tank (1988) and Little Bits of Baby (1989). In The Cat's Sanctuary (1990), Gale explores the antagonistic relationship between two sisters, one a successful writer, living with her female lover in a farmhouse in Cornwall, the other the widow of a diplomat killed by a terrorist bomb. More ambitious than his previous work, The Facts of Life (1995) is a three-generation saga focusing on the life of Edward Pepper, a Jewish composer exiled from Germany in his youth at the time of the Second World War. In this exuberant exploration of family ties and the nature of survival, Gale combines rich evocations of historical and contemporary situations with a precocious narrative fluency.