It is winter in north Yorkshire. On the brink of New Year, Jake, a laconic, isolated former farmhand in his seventies, stands alone on the moors with no idea where to go or what to do. Traumatised by the death of his wife and consumed by thoughts of a child he knows cannot be his, he is a beleaguered man. He is also in flight from the law, following the murder of an elderly resident in a local care home. With nowhere to turn, he falls back on an old friend, Sheila, for sanctuary and solace.
In The Mating Habits of Stags, Ray Robinson describes Jake’s attempts to make sense of his troubled existence, while also providing a wonderfully empathetic account of Sheila, who, while trying to support her demanding adult daughter Edith, struggles to come to terms with the possibility of Jake’s criminal past and the toll it might take on her own life.
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