It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
Grandmothers

Grandmothers

Summary

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

Reviews

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

About the author

Salley Vickers

Salley Vickers is the author of many acclaimed novels including the best-selling Miss Garnet's Angel, Mr Golightly's Holiday, The Other Side of You and The Cleaner of Chartres (Viking 2012) and two short story collections, the latest The Boy Who Could See Death (Viking 2015). She has worked as a cleaner, a dancer, a teacher of children with special needs, a university lecturer and a psychoanalyst. She now writes and lectures full time. Find out more at www.salleyvickers.com or @SalleyVickers.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more