Ashland & Vine

A master of language. Hilary Mantel Kate, a grieving, semi-alcoholic film student, invites an elderly woman to take part in an oral-history documentary. Jean declines but makes her a bizarre counteroffer: if Kate can stay sober for four days, she will tell her a story. If she can stay sober beyond that, there will be another, and then another, amounting to the entire history of one familys life. Gradually, Jean offers a heart-breaking account, not only of her own history a lost lover, a family scarred by war but of the American century itself; as a deep connection emerges between the women which will transform both of their lives in this remarkable novel about love grief, and the power of unlikely friendships. Burnside wrestles with hugeness in a way that few writers dare to convincingly gracious and profoundly necessary. Ali Smith