Ben Masters

When Ben Masters' father, a dedicated naturalist, is confined to the house with inoperable cancer, he is unable to follow the butterfly season for the first time since his childhood. His son must become his connection to the outdoors, reporting back on his beloved Purple Emperors, Lulworth Skippers, Wood Whites and Silver-studded Blues. The problem is, his son knows practically nothing about the natural world. Blending natural history, pop culture, and literary biography, this unforgettable memoir charts a terminal summer when butterflies become a way for father and son to talk about masculinity, memory, identity, generational differences, and, ultimately, loss and continuation. The Flitting takes readers on an unlikely journey, flitting between the lives and works of Vladimir Nabokov and other literary lepidopterists; the artistic metamorphoses of Prince and Joni Mitchell; butterflies and gender in Virginia Woolf, Angela Carter and The Sopranos; the voices of John Clare and Luther Vandross. These diverse subjects come together in an intensely authentic portrait of a father and son sharing passions, lessons and regrets as they run out of time.

It's the last night. The moment it all ends. As Eliot and his friends wave goodbye to University - their education done with, the world calling - they must make a reckoning with everything that has gone by. Here it comes: the pints, the shots, the pubs, the clubs, the jokes, the snogs, the fumbles, the memories, the secrets, the lies told, the 3AM hard truths, the bubble bursting, the tearing up of everything, the start and rush of the rest of your life.