Description

A Times Best Fiction Book of the Year
A Guardian Best Fiction Book of the Year
A BBC Culture Book of the Year

For Alice and Hanna, saint and sinner, growing up is a trial. There is their mother, who takes a divide-and-conquer approach to child-rearing, and their father, who takes an absent one. There is also their older brother Michael, whose disapproval is a force to be reckoned with.

There is the catastrophe that is never spoken of, but which has shaped everything . . .

As adults, Alice and Hanna must deal with disappointments in work and in love as well as increasingly complicated family tensions, and lives that look dismayingly dissimilar to what they’d intended. They must look for a way to repair their own fractured relationship, and they must finally choose their own approach to their dominant mother: submit or burn the house down. And they must decide at last whether life is really anything more than (as Hanna would have it) a tragedy with a few hilarious moments.

From the author of the Waterstones Book of the Month Our Fathers comes a compelling domestic comedy about complex family dynamics, mental health and the intricacies of sibling relationships.

‘IT’LL EASILY BE ONE OF MY BOOKS OF THE YEAR’ Hannah Beckerman

‘It’s a warm book and a touching one. And did I mention it’s funny? Just read it. You’ll see’ The Times

‘Funny, tender and sad’ Sunday Express

‘If you liked Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss, you’ll love this novel’ Good Housekeeping

‘One of the richest explorations of family dysfunction I’ve read’ the i newspaper

‘Shades of Fleabag in this smart, funny drama’ Mail on Sunday

‘An enjoyably bittersweet novel about a dysfunctional modern family’ Independent

‘Razor-sharp ‘ Observer

‘One of the funniest novels you’ll read this year’ Guardian

WHAT READERS ARE SAYING
5* ‘I adored this book’
5* ‘A brilliant novel about a dysfunctional family’
5* ‘This book blew me away’
5* ‘Loved, loved, loved this! Laugh-out-loud funny and beautifully poignant’
5* ‘The best book i’ve read this year’

Publisher Review

SO brilliant. A brutally funny and whip-smart novel about dysfunctional families, with some of the best fictional sibling relationships I've ever read. It'll easily be one of my Books of the Year. -- Hannah Beckerman I didn't want it to end. Completely absorbing and brilliant and funny and painful. -- Charlotte Duckworth Toxic mothers, absent fathers, angry sisters and enraging brothers - this sharp, wise comedy explores difficult family dynamics, from all-too-relatable emotional patterns to the inexplicable agonies of mental illness; yet it's also one of the funniest novels you'll read this year. * Guardian (50 Hottest New Summer Reads) * Rebecca Wait's highly entertaining fourth novel is a masterclass in familial tensions, told with razor-sharp dialogue, wit and emotional insight. * Observer *