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 These lines are taken from a novel about a tower block: not a neglected masterpiece of Soviet socialist realism but the debut novel by Nigel Packer, The Restoration Of Otto Laird.

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For the last 25 years, elderly architect Otto Laird has lived a secluded life with Anika – his sophisticated, protective second wife – in the Swiss Alps. In his heyday he was regarded as a visionary, an optimistic driving force in a time of post-war reconstruction. But times change. Few people now share Otto’s love of concrete. His landmark building in South London – Marlowe House, a 60s residential tower block – is now scheduled for demolition. As part of a campaign to save it from the wrecking ball, Otto flies to London to make a TV documentary.

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But in so doing, Otto returns to everything that made him flee to Switzerland in the first place. It’s the first time he’s set foot in London since his first wife died.

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This is also a novel about a marriage. Otto – the brilliant refugee from Vienna who emerged blinking from a cellar in Antwerp not only with a vision of the future but with an old-world European sense of civilisation intact. And Cynthia – the Home Counties beatnik, architect and designer in her own right, with a passion for the natural world. With a personal soundtrack that includes Schubert, Mahler and Sonny Rollins in his head – Otto retraces his personal A to Z of the city and is overwhelmed by memory, much of it painful, as he finds Cynthia everywhere.

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The book is shot through with the power of memory and place and the symbiosis between them. We all carry with us our personal, psychic maps of the places we’ve lived in. I’ve lived in London for about 30 years now – so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised – but all the same I was struck by how many of Otto’s ‘places’ were also significant to me, or my wife, or both of us. To name but a few: the Oval, RIBA (a favourite lunching spot for Sweet Talkers until they moved the restaurant out of the spacious Florence Hall), the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead, the hospital in Queen’s Square and, further afield, the absurdly beautiful city of Nafplio in the Pelopponese.

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Given that affordable housing is one of the biggest challenges facing London if it is to remain a city actually populated by its citizens, and thinking also of the brave and resilient young women of the Focus E15 Group, this seems to me a very timely book, too.

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So why the pictures of blackberries? You’ll have to listen to Book At Bedtime and/or read the novel to find out.

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The Restoration Of Otto Laird by Nigel Packer – read by Allan Corduner and produced by Rosalynd Ward for Sweet Talk Productions – starts on Monday 27 October at 10.45 pm.