When we were bad
The Rubin family, everybody agrees, seems doomed to happiness.

…If this, the few minutes before the wedding, could be frozen and kept unsullied by the future – the Rubins in their heyday – their happiness would be complete. But it cannot be frozen. Things happen.




‘As intelligent as it is funny...brilliant...a joy...a beautifully observed literary comedy as well as a painfully accurate depiction of one big old family mess‘
Observer


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Daughters of Jerusalem
She is sick of this – of Oxford’s sooty castles…She is sick of navy-blue corduroy, Gothic arches, famous fig trees, shabby dons’ wives, cellars, rivers, genius children, stuttering and gold leaf.   It is your fault, she thinks, approaching her husband’s college, as she glimpses her neighbour, an entirely silent botanist, attempting to untangle his own beard from a hawthorn tree.  None of you are normal.  Is normal.  And I am.

‘Funny, exciting, lyrical, poignant, redemptive’
Guardian



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Love in Idleness
Anna stands in the doorway, waiting.  There Stella sits, legs drawn up beneath her on the sofa, a cigarette wanly smoking between her fingers.  She smiles at Anna, eyes almost closed, and pats the sofa beside her. 

‘So. How lovely.  Just us two together.’



‘A strange, stealthy, headily scented seethe of a book’
Ali Smith, Glasgow Herald


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