Author of The Stranding returns this year with a new novel about family – love, loss, hope and joy and everything in between. This is a gentle read, especially compared to Kate’s debut novel. If you’re looking for the post apocalyptic storyline you won’t get that – this is a different book. But the nuanced prose that has depth, emotion and that takes a quiet and meandering journey to its culmination, is strong once more.
“There could be great things coming for you just around the corner, or there could not. It could all be about to get worse. Life is jumbled up, out of order, random. The loose threads don’t just get tied up in a bow.”
This book reminds us of the importance of this one life, and as we move slowly through a leisurely afternoon preparing for a celebration of love, we’re taken back and forth between the past and the current day, to understand exactly why and how this fragmented family are coming together.
Characters created from heartache and happiness are abundant in the pages of this book, ones you will be frustrated with and ones you will love. The fragility and strength of a family unit is tested and tried through Kate’s beautiful prose.
About the Book
It is my dearest wish, that after so long apart, I am able to bring this family together for my wedding day.
This house. This family.
Mary has raised a family in this house. Watched her children play and laugh and bicker in this house. Today she is getting married in this house, with all her family in attendance.
The wedding celebrations have brought fractured family together for the first time in years: there’s Phoebe and her husband Michael, children in tow. The young and sensitive Rosie, with her new partner. Irene, Mary’s ex-mother-in-law. Even Emma, Mary’s eldest, is back for the wedding – despite being at odds with everyone else.
Set over the course of an English summer’s day but punctuated with memories from the past forty years of love and loss, hope and joy, heartbreak and grief, this is the story of a family. Told by a chorus of characters, it is an exploration of the small moments that bring us to where we are, the changes that are brought about by time, and what, despite everything, stays the same.
About The Author
Kate Sawyer was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, UK where she grew up in the countryside as the eldest of four siblings, after briefly living with her parents in Qatar and the Netherlands.
Kate Sawyer worked as an actor and producer before turning her hand to fiction. She has previously written for theatre and short-film.
Having lived in South London for the best part of two decades with brief stints in the Australia and the USA she recently returned to East Anglia to have her first child as a solo mother by choice.
Purchase the Book
This book can be purchased in our store either on its own or in a cosy Book Box.
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