Nature and Necessity

'...there's a ferocious energy here that will keep you reading through to the bitter end. Goddard has reinvigorated the country house novel and in Petula Montague he has created a great new monster of English fiction.' The Guardian

Meet Petula Montague, social climber par excellence. A lucky second marriage to a billionaire has made her grande dame of The Heights, a mansion atop a leafy hill in an English backwater. With the determination of a prima ballerina, Petula sets out to widen her social circle so that it includes lords of industry, famous actors from London, and the country’s most famous poet. In her wake are the frayed lives of three unloved children. The oldest daughter, Evita, flees the scene only to succumb to addiction and madness; the middle son, Jasper, moves from the Heights to a cottage on the property, living like a dog awaiting scraps from its master; and the youngest daughter, Regan, the favorite, merges with her mother and pays the costs of an unlived life.  

At once deeply satirical and moodily realistic, Nature and Necessity is a profound meditation on the irresistible lure of wealth and security. Told with a pre-modern sensibility, the narrative treats its characters like the players in a Victorian domestic epic. Goddard deftly draws scenes that are psychologically acute, even heartbreaking, yet never fail to raise a smile or a knowing shake of the head. As the plot reaches its crescendo, Goddard lets us laugh at the folly of Petula while never letting us forget that her story is our own.

Tariq Goddard was born in London and read philosophy at King's College, London, and Continental Philosophy at the University of Warwick. In 2002 his first novel, Homage to a Firing Squad, was shortlisted for the Whitbread (Costa) Book Award for First Novel and the Wodehouse-Bollinger Writing Award. He was included as one of Waterstones' 'Faces of the Future' and the novel, whose film rights were sold, was listed as one of The Observer Four Debuts of the Year. In 2003, his second novel, Dynamo, was cited as one of the ten best sports novels of all time by The Observer Sports Magazine. The Morning Rides Behind Us, his third novel, was released in 2005, and short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Fiction. In 2010, The Picture of Contented New Wealth, his fourth novel, won The Independent Publishers Award for Horror Writing, and he was awarded a development grant by The Royal Literary Fund. The Message, published in 2011 and set in a fictional African state, received Silver at the 2012 Independent Publishers Award for Literary Fiction.

In 2007, Goddard began the imprint Zero Books. In 2014, he and his co-founders left Zero Books and started Repeater Books. He lives on a farm in Wiltshire with his wife and children where he is writing his seventh novel, High John The Conqueror.