Description

From the prizewinning author of God’s Own Country and A Natural comes a moving and intimate exploration of marriage, devotion and sacrifice, and a woman’s enduring search for freedom.

‘One of our best novelists’ Daily Mail
‘A superb achievement’ Guardian
‘Moving…and beautiful’ Irish Times

Anita is a talented sous-chef at a high-end London restaurant. At home, however, her husband Patrick is suffering from dementia and declining rapidly.

As she is thrown between two conflicting worlds, Anita must make a decision: should she free them both by acting on his last plea for mercy, or should she remain faithful to the person Patrick used to be?

It’s a decision complicated by ambition and the guilt of her own past – and by her intensifying friendship with another man, Peter, and the temptation of a new life.

Publisher Review

[A] beautifully observed heart-wringer... for me there was no better novel published in 2022. * Daily Mail, *Books of the Year* * There can be no doubt he's one of our best novelists...Dealing sensitively with love, ambition and duty - not to mention the bodily experience of womanhood, from youth to late middle age...absolutely not to be missed. -- Anthony Cummings * Daily Mail * Ross Raisin's deeply thought out and beautifully unshowy fourth novel... is a superb achievement. * Guardian, *Book of the Day* * Raisin is ambitious...and impressive in his execution. * Financial Times * Raisin's... most ambitious achievement yet... The attention to detail with which Anita is drawn means she steps outside the pages and lives enduringly in the reader's mind. -- John Self * Observer *