On March 22nd Pippa Kelly will be talking about her new debut novel Invisible Ink

Kelly is one of the UK’s foremost writers on dementia, having charted her own mother’s deterioration and eventual death from the condition in the national press.

Her new novel is a mesmerising tale of love, loss and guilt within a family and draws on her own experiences of watching a loved one being slowly stolen by dementia and the complex emotions that this provokes.

It tells the story of young London lawyer Max Rivers whose seemingly successful life belies the crushing sense of guilt he feels over the disappearance of his younger brother Peter when the two of them were schoolboys.

Max deals with this guilt by suppressing his emotions and never talking about Peter. But when his elderly mum develops dementia and comes to stay with him and his girlfriend, she mistakes their new baby for her missing son Peter, and Max’s long-buried secret is out.

Kelly says that when she reread Invisible Ink prior to its publication last autumn she was struck by how much her own unhappiness and guilt – over her mother’s struggles with dementia and her inability to spend more time caring for both her frail, elderly parents – had permeated the novel.

Two years after her mum’s death in 2012, Kelly set up her award-winning website pippakelly.co.uk, which soon became known as one of the most insightful, informative and compelling dementia and elderly care blogs in the UK. She will be signing copies of her book and giving a talk at the The Topsham Bookshop, 27 Fore Street on Wednesday 22 March from 6.30-8pm.

Invisible Ink, published by Austin Macauley, is available from Amazon on Kindle (£3.50), paperback (£8.99) and hardback (£14.99).