Description

When Mercy Garrett moves herself out of the family home, everyone determines not to notice.

All she wants is space and silence. No clutter. Not even their cat, Desmond.

But it turns out family life is impossible to escape – particularly when it’s in your past. For Mercy it all begins in 1959, with a holiday to a cabin by a lake. It’s the only one the Garretts will ever take, but its effects will ripple through the generations.

The glorious Sunday Times bestseller follows one family’s joys and heartbreaks, mistakes and secrets, from the 1950s right up to today

‘Gorgeous, charming, profound, and written with such lightness of touch’ MARIAN KEYES

‘A perfect work of fiction’ MEG MASON

‘She is and always will be my favourite author’ LIANE MORIARTY

‘Exquisitely crafted, tender, hilarious, devastatingly precise, I loved this powerful meditation on the small and often unvoiced moments that can make up a life’ RACHEL JOYCE

‘Anne Tyler really is the best… Her sheer brilliance makes it all seems so effortless’ GRAHAM NORTON

‘A faultless novel, effortlessly profound. I read it in two sittings, totally immersed’ VICTORIA HISLOP

Publisher Review

Such a perfect work of fiction, you want to turn it over like a tapestry to see how it is done; how Tyler can sew gentle humour into a truly heart-wrenching story, and twist all of life's hurts into a family saga that is ultimately life-affirming, and a brisk and thrilling read. We readers are so lucky a writer like Tyler exists -- MEG MASON Tyler's sentences are wholly hers, instantly recognisable and impossible to duplicate -- HANYA YANIGIHARA She is and always will be my favourite author -- LIANE MORIARTY Anne Tyler really is the best . . . her sheer brilliance makes it all seem so effortless -- GRAHAM NORTON One of my favourite writers -- ALI SMITH