A story of remembrance desire and the occult by one of Britains finest contemporary novelistsThe lapping of the waves was a lesson in mortality Sometimes the corrective would work and his turmoil would recede The sound secured him as the contemplation of a skull might make a penitent secure And sometimes it was more than a corrective it brought elation Live it urged with each whisper of the water Live live live Leaning forward Lucas repeated the words with too much fervor to make sure that the lesson was not lost on me This was his mission not to help people to keep hold of the past but to help them to liveJonathan Buckleys latest novel Live live live is a subtly suspenseful and slowburning story about the occult as a source of psychological and existential truth Lucas Judd is a man with a gift He hears the dead speaking Joshua lives next door just a boy when he first meets his mysterious kind neighbor But as he grows up his instructive friendship with Lucas is gradually altered by desire Joshuas attraction to then obsession with Erin the much younger woman with whom Lucas lives The nature of her relationship to Lucas is unclear and unclassifiable Is it erotic platonic pedagogical And is Lucas a sham or a kind of shaman Is Joshua really a reliable witness At the heart of this powerful and resonant novel are timely questions about narrative truth and timeless questions about life death and belief There are no certainties in Live live live only mutability permeability and the beautifully observed cadence of change