WINNER OF THE NERO BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION 2023WINNER OF AN POST IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR
2023SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023SHORTLISTED FOR THE WRITERS' PRIZE FOR FICTION
2024SHORTLISTED FOR THE KERRY GROUP NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2024ONE OF SARAH JESSICA PARKER'S BEST
BOOKS OF 2023Book of the Year 2023 according to New York Times New Yorker The Sunday Times
The Economist Observer Guardian Washington Post Lit Hub TIME magazine Irish Times The
Oldie Daily Mail i Paper Independent The Standard The Times Kirkus Daily Express City
A.M. From one of our greatest comic novelists and the author of Skippy Dies comes a funny
thought-provoking story of one family desperately clinging on as their world falls apart . . .
'A tragicomic triumph. You won't read a sadder truer funnier novel this year' Guardian The
Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie's once-lucrative car business is going under - but rather
than face the music he's spending his days in the woods building an apocalypse-proof bunker
with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewellery on eBay while their
teenage daughter Cass formerly top of her class seems determined to binge-drink her way to
her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run
away from home. Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac a casual favour to a
charming stranger a bee caught beneath a bridal veil? Can a single moment of bad luck change
the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written - is there still time to
find a happy ending? 'The finest novel that Murray has yet written . . . will surely be one of
the books of 2023' Sunday Independent 'Murray is a natural storyteller . . . Ambitious
expansive hugely entertaining tragicomic fiction' Irish Times 'It's a thing of beauty a novel
that will fill your heart' Observer 'Generous immersive sharp-witted and devastating . . . a
triumph' Financial Times 'It's been compared to Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections I'd argue
it's better' Daily Mail
