The Weekend

Product Description THE SUNDAY TIMES 'BEST BOOKS FOR SUMMER 2021'A Times, Guardian and Daily Mail paperback pickA Times, Observer, Independent, Daily Express and Good Housekeeping book of the year'The Weekend is so great I am struggling to find the words to do it justice'Marian Keyes'A rare pleasure... I was shocked by how unusual it felt to spend 275 pages exclusively in the company of older women'Sunday Times'Riveting' Elizabeth Day'Glorious... Charlotte Wood joins the ranks of writers such as Nora Ephron, Penelope Lively and Elizabeth Strout'Guardian 'A perfect, funny, insightful, novel about women, friendship, and ageing'Nina Stibbe'Wood ably conveys that older women didn't used to be old, and that the experience of ageing is universally bewildering'Lionel Shriver (Observer, Books of the year) 'Triumphantly brings to life the honest, inner lives of women' Independent'A lovely, lively, intelligent, funny book'Tessa Hadley 'Charlotte Wood's powerful novel depicts old age as a time when hope, desire and love are still felt as vividly as they were in youth'Daily Mail'One sharp, funny, heartbreaking and gorgeously-written package. I loved it' Paula Hawkins'These women are so alive on the page, it is impossible not to feel a kinship and intimacy with each of them'Daily Express'Hypnotic and profoundly unsettling... Masterful'Rosamund LuptonSylvie, Jude, Wendy and Adele have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three.These women couldn't be more different: Jude, a once-famous restaurateur with a spotless life and a long-standing affair with a married man; Wendy, an acclaimed feminist intellectual; Adele, a former star of the stage, now practically homeless. Struggling to recall exactly why they've remained close all these years, the grieving women gather for one last weekend at Sylvie's old beach house. But fraying tempers, an elderly dog, unwelcome guests and too much wine collide in a storm that threatens to sweep away their friendship for good. Review The Weekend by Charlotte Wood is acerbic brilliance... It is so great I am struggling to find the words to do it justice... Wood is an agonisingly gifted writer, so great at capturing micro-emotions, the complexity of friendship, love, mother-child tension, all done with breezy readability. At time it's funny, thought-provoking, very moving. I care so much about the characters. I am now going to read all her other books! ― Marian Keyes A rare pleasure... Warm and wise... This unsentimental gaze is typical of Wood's quietly radical tragicomedy. I was shocked by how unusual it felt to spend 275 pages exclusively in the company of older women... The Weekend is a shortish novel that slips down easily... With ostensibly light touch, Wood commands the long histories of these three very different women... A surefooted novel that packs 50 years into one weekend' -- Claire Lowden ― THE SUNDAY TIMES A glorious, forthright tale of female friendship... The temptation to reduce ageing to a condition experienced en masse rather than by individuals is a trap that snares only lesser writers. The better ones have avoided it - writers such as Nora Ephron and Penelope Lively, and, most recently, Elizabeth Strout. Joining their ranks is Australian Charlotte Wood, whose novel The Weekend conceives of old age as a state of mutiny rather than stasis, a period of constant striving against the world, but also against oneself... Masterful... What gives this novel its glorious, refreshing, forthright spine is that each of its protagonists is still adamantly (often disastrously) alive, and still less afraid of death than irrelevance. I read The Weekend during the week Dame Judi Dench, at 85, became the oldest person to appear on the cover of British Vogue, and soon afterwards a photo of 70-year-old Vera Wang wearing a sports bra went viral. There seemed to be a marvellous s