The Year Carrow Was Tuned to Me

About this book

Every spring, the harbour city of Carrow draws one resident by lottery and spends a year fitting itself around their life: tram times, bakery subsidies, the hours of the public baths, whether the night ferry runs. In 2079 the letter arrives for Aurel Penhallow, forty-nine, who mends returned toasters in the back room of the Thing Library, eats the same noodles four nights a week and has not set foot on the night ferry in twenty-four years. Within weeks the city starts shrinking to fit him. A bench disappears. A bakery loses its bread. Aurel could change, but the rules forbid him from changing his life in order to steer the city, and he has a reason to fear those rules that nobody at the Library knows: twenty-five years ago, he helped write them. Now he has to find out whether a man can learn to want more.