The Homemade God

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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Discover the brand-new novel from the Booker-Prize longlisted author, a tense family drama set in the Italian lakes perfect for fans of Ann Patchett and Maggie O'Farrell.

There is a heatwave across Europe, and Goose and his three sisters gather at the family's house by Lake Orta in Piedmont, Italy.

Their father, a famous artist, recently remarried a much younger woman and decamped to Italy to finish his masterpiece.

Now he is dead. And there is no sign of his new wife and or his final painting.

Though the siblings have always been close, the things they learn that summer - about themselves, their father and their new stepmother - will drive them apart before they can come to any kind of understanding of what their father's legacy truly is.

Wonderfully atmospheric and suspenseful, this is at heart a novel about sibling relationships - what holds a family together and what might fracture it forever.

'Rachel Joyce is a masterful storyteller.' - Sarah Winman, Sunday Times bestselling author of Still Life

'Joyce is a fearless explorer of emotional landscape.' – Sunday Times

'If only there were more novelists like Rachel Joyce' – Telegraph

© Rachel Joyce 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Reviews

The Homemade God is a beautiful portrayal of family, art and the things we inherit from our parents, both creative and emotional. Joyce writes with great emotional acuity about the complexity of sibling relationships in a richly woven family drama, with all Joyce's trademark compassion and insight. It's a wonderful piece of storytelling.
Hannah Beckerman, author of The Forgetting

About the author

Rachel Joyce

Rachel Joyce is the author of the Sunday Times and international bestsellers The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Perfect, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North, The Music Shop, Miss Benson's Beetle, and a collection of interlinked short stories, A Snow Garden & Other Stories.
Rachel’s books have been translated into thirty-seven languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The critically acclaimed film of the novel, for which Rachel also wrote the screenplay, was released in 2023. Miss Benson’s Beetle won the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize in 2021. Rachel was awarded the Specsavers National Book Awards New Writer of the Year in December 2012 and was shortlisted for the UK Author of the Year in 2014. In 2024 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Kingston University.
Rachel has written over twenty original afternoon plays and adaptations of the classics for BBC Radio 4. She lives with her family near Stroud.

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