The Weekend

THE SUNDAY TIMES 'BEST BOOKS FOR SUMMER 2021'
A Times, Guardian and Daily Mail paperback pick
A 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 Lupton

Sylvie, 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.