This Family: Your perfect summer read

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Set over the course of an English summer’s day but punctuated with memories from the past forty years of love and loss, hope and joy, heartbreak and grief, this is the story of a family. It wasn't Phoebe's addiction or behaviour due to her addiction that made me hate her, although this certainly didn't help, but it was the sheer nastiness and disregard she had for other people and their feelings, for pretty much the whole novel. Lyrical, literary and luminous ... buy it and treat yourself to writing at its finest.' BETHANY CLIFT

I don't know if Sawyer has any direct experience with the impact on children when a parent has taken their own life, but there was so much of myself that I saw in Rosie. The emotional impact of trying to support the surviving parent while squashing down your own needs and experiences, the odd misplaced pressure and guilt that you carry around inside trying to prove yourself to the world, and trying to prove that you're a good person. It really does leave it's scars. Kate Sawyer is an extraordinary, original writer... An immersive and absorbing read - I could not put this book down." - Aliya Ali-AfzalMessy, complicated joyful characters and relationships that sneak into your heart and make you care … a bittersweet, deftly woven, captivating portrayal of a mother and daughters’ – Jennifer Saint

The author has the ability to define characters so well that you really feel by the end of the story that you know them all and I could recognise my own friends and family members in them

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Kate Sawyer is an extraordinary, original writer... An immersive and absorbing read - I could not put this book down.' ALIYA ALI AFZAL Brilliantly plotted, deftly written and oozing with sophisticated style . . . It's what everyone will be reading this summer -- Annie Garthwaite Demands to be experienced . . . A glorious, sweeping family saga from one of the most exciting novelists of recent times -- Jessica Moor As I said I’m adapting THE STRANDING for screen, so hopefully there’ll be more to talk about on that front soon. I am working on a third novel. And I am hoping to continue taking the podcast to new audiences too. Oh, and I’m getting involved with the Bury St Edmunds Literature Festival which is returning to Bury St Edmunds with a bang this year on 20-22nd October. It’s a lovely little festival and we are excited that there’ll be more authors joining us this year after a quiet couple of years because of the pandemic. So, I am excited for that and keen to enjoy all of the events that I’m doing for THIS FAMILY around East Anglia and further afield because I didn’t get to do a proper book tour last time round! I'm sure all readers of This Family will have differing opinions on which characters they liked, and which characters they disliked, especially when considering the three sisters (Emma, Phoebe, and Rosie), based on their own personalities and preferences.

Will they be able to put aside their differences, the past betrayals and hurts? And put their love for Mary and her desire for peace above their personal feelings? This family is deeply flawed but there’s the potential for what unites them to be stronger than what divides. There are Mary’s friends, Iain and Liz, whom she’d met 40 years earlier when pregnant with Emma. They were bohemian (Punks). She thought her then husband, Richard and controlling mum in law, Irene would hate them, but she was wrong. They were welcomed. This Family is the latest by The Stranding author, Kate Sawyer. I loved that book so much and I know lots of you reading this did too.

My only qualm was the mention of so many major world events as markers for the years the family lived through; 9/11, the July bombings in London, the Indonesian tsunami, the COVID 19 pandemic. I felt it over complicated the narrative at times. A quiet, piercing contemplation on what really matters when it comes to the end of the world. Strange and beautiful’ ABIGAIL DEAN But the news is about to catch up with Ruth, and her problems are going to be swept away…along with the rest of the world. A novel that has stayed with me for weeks afterwards . . . Perceptive and unflinching’ JESSIE BURTON

Huma is also a brilliant creative writing teacher and we discuss her style as a teacher and some of her favourite book recommendations for writers. Sawyer writes about difficult family relationships to perfection, and I love how she examines the things both said and unsaid that come between the characters. It is the women in this story that are by far the most interesting, and Sawyer's exploration of the relationships between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, mother and daughters, and female siblings is glorious. There are a lot of hard hitting scenes, particularly around loss and betrayal, but it is the small moments that actually have the most power.This is an old style family saga, with all the foibles, quirks and oddities that large families have. It is a very slow start, and really nothing much happens in the first 70% of the book, but the reader is kept guessing what has caused the major rift between Emma and Phoebe, though it’s pretty obvious Michael is involved.