Grandmothers

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

The new novel from Salley Vickers, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Librarian, available for pre-order now


Grandmothers is the story of three very different women and their relationship with the younger generation: fiercely independent Nan, who leads a secret life as an award-winning poet when she is not teaching her grandson Billy how to lie; glamorous Blanche, deprived of the company of her beloved granddaughter Kitty by her hostile daughter-in-law, who finds solace in rebellious drinking and shoplifting; and shy, bookish Minna who in the safety of shepherd's hut shares with her surrogate granddaughter Rose her passion for reading. The outlook of all three women subtly alters when through their encounters with each other they discover that the past is always with us and that we go on learning and changing until the very end.

Grandmothers is a beautifully observed, sometimes subversive, often tender and elegiac novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Librarian.

'Vickers sees with a clear eye and writes with a light hand. She's a presence worth cherishing in the ranks of modern novelists.' Philip Pullman

'Vickers has a formidable knack for laying open the human heart' Sunday Times

Critics Review

  • No one can dig down into the shrouded recesses of the human heart quite as forensically as Vickers

    Sunday Times
  • Vickers writes of relationships with undaunted clarity

    Adam Phillips
  • The Librarian will wring the heart of anyone who fell in love with books as a child. It is a hymn to the power of literature…delightful

    The Times on 'The Librarian'
  • A nostalgic treat…involving and hopeful

    Mail on Sunday on 'The Librarian'

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