Description

A master of language. Hilary MantelKate, a grieving, semi-alcoholic film student, invites an elderly woman to take part in an oral-history documentary.Jean declines but makes her a bizarre counteroffer: if Kate can stay sober for four days, she will tell her a story. If she can stay sober beyond that, there will be another, and then another, amounting to the entire history of one familys life.Gradually, Jean offers a heart-breaking account, not only of her own history a lost lover, a family scarred by war but of the American century itself; as a deep connection emerges between the women which will transform both of their lives in this remarkable novel about love grief, and the power of unlikely friendships.Burnside wrestles with hugeness in a way that few writers dare to convincingly gracious and profoundly necessary. Ali Smith