The second novel from prize-winning author Francesca Segal - about the challenges of the new, blended family, the difficulties of starting over, and the question of what we should let our children get away with...
Francesca Segal is an award-winning writer and journalist. Her first novel, The Innocents, won the 2012 Costa First Novel Award, the 2012 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, the 2013 Sami Rohr Prize, and a Betty Trask Award. It was also long-listed for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. She lives in London with her family.
It’s beautifully written
*Good Housekeeping*
A very smart, soulful, compelling, elegantly written domestic
novel
*Observer*
Francesca Segal is incisive on modern lives, penetrating and
thoughtful - and yet always joyfully entertaining and stylishly
readable.
*Naomi Alderman*
Segal’s wit and intelligence are entirely her own and the moral
dilemmas of her characters could not be more modern… Segal has a
superb eye for the lies that the middle-aged lovers tell
themselves, and they are jolted back to reality when it all goes
spectacularly wrong. It is nearly a tragedy, but not quite; she’s
just too funny
*The Times*
Elegant… an entertaining look at the messy business of trying to be
in a family in emotionally trying circumstances… Irresistible
*Mail on Sunday*
A story that is equal parts hilarious and devastating
*Vogue*
Francesa Segal is precise and funny, and The Awkward Age is
brimming with keen observations of the highest order--the clever,
the sore, and the sublime.
*Emma Straub*
Segal… is a sharp observer of the tribulations of teenage love and
modern relationships. Particularly strong on how blind parents are
towards their ghastly offspring’s flaws, this book is a lively,
quick-witted performance
*The Sunday Times*
In Francesca Segal’s magnificent new novel The Awkward Age,
romantic and parental love go head to head, stress-testing
loyalties and bonds with heartbreaking consequences… Genius… An
impressively nuanced and convincing portrait of maternal love… a
painful delight to read, invoking a perfectly balanced oscillation
between compassion and frustration
*Independent*
Themes of non-nuclear family life, the everyday fractures and
renovations inherent to relationships of any kind, amid moments of
pitch-perfect comic tension… Segal navigates these re-drawn battle
lines with skill and sensitivity… There is no precise time, we are
reminded, at which life becomes less tangled, at which
personalities are formed as in aspic: we can see that all ages are
awkward, but some are more awkward than others
*Financial Times*
Movingly insightful about love, grief, birth and parenting, funny
about teenagers and compassionate about ageing, The Awkward Age is
a witty, compelling delight.
*AD Miller, author of Snowdrops & The Faithful Couple*
An adept, comic study of shifting priorities and the continual flux
of child-parent relationships
*Financial Times, Summer Books 2017*
humorous, wise, well-observed
*Tatler*
She takes six characters… and plonks them in sturdy houses in
Hampstead, sets the clock, and lets the story play out… Like a good
piece of Bach, what unfolds has an inevitability to it but manages
also to be surprising at every moment. Segal has an uncanny ability
to climb into the mind of each character and show us convincingly
exactly what he or she would think, say and do
*Spectator*
Francesca Segal’s sharply observed second novel asks what parents
owe to their children, and vice versa… A great premise for a novel,
and Segal handles it expertly… Everyday family interactions – the
deep, primal resentments played out over a bowl of porridge, or a
shopping list – are observed warmly and yet with hawk-like
precision… skilfully crafted morality tale for our times
*Literary Review*
Segal excels at character minutiae, switching protagonists from
page to page but still doing each one justice… By the end of the
book, I felt I would recognise these people waking down Haverstock
Hill, albeit that I might not want to stop for a chat… As a comedy
of manners though, The Awkward Age is entertaining and
intelligently written
*Jewish Chronicle*
Francesca Segal gets the tricky mother/teenage daughter
relationship just right in her sharply observant The Awkward
Age.
*The Bookseller*
Segal’s writing is a joy – funny, wise, and sharply observant...
Terrific
*The Bookseller*
By turns tender, brutal, mordantly funny, and heartbreaking, The
Awkward Age is preternaturally knowing about fractured families,
and young, middle-aged, and elder love. Every sentence is
gorgeously, masterfully written. I loved it as I’ve loved no other
recent novel. Francesca Segal is a major novelist
*Peter Nichols, author of The Rocks*
A beguiling story about the oceans between family members,
generations, and continents and the journeys we make to reach each
other on the other side
*Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty
and No One is Here Except All of Us*
There are moments in Francesca Segal’s novel when you are so caught
up in the characters that you want to shout at them as though they
are your own friends… Think rows, sulks, unexpected relationships
and sweet romance all dissected with an elegantly forensic
precision
*Psychologies*
Terrific, sharply observed… Segal gets the precarious
mother-teenage daughter relationship spot on
*Saga*
Segal’s is a clever, cruel, redemptive, psychologically acute novel
that made this reader glad to have been at school just too early
for Facebook, selfies and an “online community” baying for news of
your latest boyfriend
*Standpoint*
Thoughtful and beautifully observed
*Woman & Home*
A gripping foray into second families
*Prima*
Thanks to its occasional moments of emotional veracity, The Awkward
Age will be praised as a worthy successor to Segal’s debut
*Literary Review*
Francesca Segal is an accomplished writer. She neatly describes the
clash of cultures between the academically rigorous education
enjoyed by Nathan and Gwen’s freer, no-holds-barred comprehensive
school. There is an engaging and colourful cast of characters…
Segal vividly conveys the difficulties faced by imperfectly blended
families
*Daily Express*
This is a warm, funny book dealing with a most modern matter
*Running In Heels*
A brilliant, thoroughly modern family drama from the author of The
Innocents
*Vogue*
Punchy… Segal tackles her subject with humour and intelligence and
a wealth of memorable characters
*Jewish Quarterly*
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