This Family

Kate Sawyer worked as an actor and producer, and wrote several short films before turning her hand to fiction. Her debut novel, The Stranding, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, won the East Anglian fiction prize, was adapted for BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime and is being developed for TV by Fremantle and Afua Hirsch's production company Born In Me.Kate is the host of Novel Experience, a weekly podcast where she talks to authors about their writing practices and the experiences that brought them to, through and beyond publication. After twenty years living in London, she recently returned to her native East Anglia, where, as a solo mother by choice, she lives with her young daughter.

'Friendship, rivalry, infidelity and the love that binds them all together are unpacked in this ambitious, immersive and beautifully written story.' RED'Every nuance of mothers and daughters and sister relationships is vividly explored. Beautifully written, it expertly weaves the past with the present, building the tension, so you have to turn the pages' GEORGINA MOORE'Intriguing, gripping, moving - this deserves to be HUGE.' MARIAN KEYESFrom the Costa-shortlisted author of THE STRANDINGMary has raised her daughters in this house. Watched them play and fight and grow up in this house. Today it is the house where she will get married. The wedding celebrations have brought the fractured family together for the first time in years: There is Phoebe and her husband Michael, children in tow. The young and sensitive Rosie, with her new partner. Irene, Mary's ex-mother-in-law. And Emma. There, despite all that has gone before.Set over the course of an English summer's day and punctuated with memories from the past forty years of love and betrayal, 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 intimacies and transgressions that bring us to where we are, the changes that are brought about by time, and what, despite everything, stays the same.