Your Life Without Me

by James Meek

An explosive modern novel from the award-winning writer of The People's Act of Love

Mr Burman is unmoored. Still reckoning with the death of his wife Ada, and struggling to understand his grown-up daughter Leila, he finds himself on a train to London, at the invitation of the police.

He is to meet Raf, a young man suspected of trying to blow up St Paul's cathedral - and a man once intimately connected with the Burman family. Have the police laid a trap?

Compelling and compassionate, this novel follows Mr Burman's journey towards the mystery of a radical act and into the true nature of his own family. It asks what a person leaves behind when they've gone, and how much of the past we can carry with us into the future.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, 21st Century

247 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 12, 2026

Reviews

[Stephen the Bookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Art, beauty, shouldn't be something rich people lock themselves up in and hide inside. It should be a state everyone lives in."

Sometimes you read a novel that leaves you bewildered and deeply contemplative. Your Life Without Me is one such novel. This is story of Mr Burman (his first name is never is provided) as he navigates and reflects upon his married life, the death of his wife and the impact upon his family when an enigmatic pupil, Raf, enters their lives and proceeds to attempt to destroy St Paul's cathedral.

Over a twenty four hour period, the life of Mr Burman is explored as he prepares to visit his former student now held in a maximum security prison and awaiting trial. Within this time frame, he contemplates his marriage and the relationship with his daughter, Leila , who still lives with him but rarely communicates- did they fail her as parents?

But parallel to this exploration of a "privileged" family life is the examination of the actions of Raf; the inscrutable student who continual challenged the status quo in relation to architecture and history - why shouldn't we demolish the old to make way for the new/ how do we determine the value of one place over another and its impact upon society?- but also entered the family and played games with the precarious equilibrium that'd been established.

Mr Burman's inner voices of Comfort and Rigour challenge his thoughts and actions; should he visit Raf in prison ; was he complicit in encouraging the young man to question everything?

The slight " depersonalising " of Mr Burman made it hard to fully empathise with him; was he lost in the maelstrom of life, was he pompous and in denial of influence ; why did he not confront issues in his marriage and connection with his daughter more directly?

This is a fascinating novel that will make all readers question the role of architecture, history and modernity in our lives and the impact on society- there are deeper metaphors explored in relation to the structure and fragility of relationships, marriage and human perception.

A novel that provokes and teases and possibly in need of a second read for a deeper insight - intriguing and challenging.

Favourite Quote:

Intellectual vanity is a pathetic weakness at th best of times but when it shows itself in someone who hasn't an ounce of willpower follow through with any of his so-called ideas, even to write them down, it's contemptible " -this could be applied to so many and the hypocrisies in modern communication.

3.75 but rounded to 4

Thank you to Canongate and Netgalley for the advance copy.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘What if you demolished something a lot of people think is wonderful? What if you blew up Notre Dame, or the Taj Mahal, or St Paul's Cathedral? Wouldn't people ask themselves whether it could be made again? Mightn't they feel a duty to work harder, think more deeply, to make good the loss?'
'They might', came Raf's voice from behind him.

Your Life Without Me is the latest novel by James Meek, a novelist and journalist whose third novel, the brilliantly odd The People’s Act of Love bought him a Booker nomination, the Ondaatje Prize and critical acclaim. It was one of my top 3 books of 2005, edged out only by the first volume of Marias’s magnificent Your Face Tomorrow trilogy and Salman Rushdie’s brilliant and underrated Shalimar the Clown. But that perhaps set my expectations for Meek's work unreasonably high as I was disappointed by the four novels of his I have read subsequenly (the earlier Museum of Doubt, and then The Heart Broke In, We Are Now Beginning Our Descent and To Calais, In Ordinary Time). Alongside his novels, he writes for the LRB, and has written non-fictional political works.

This, his latest novel, was for me, if flawed, a welcome return to form (unless my expectations have been recalibrated), if very different (one can only admire the variety in Meek's work).

It was also fascinating to read this novel immediately after the 2025 Booker Prize winning Flesh, as this is in many respects the antithesis of that novel. The story is told from the perspective of Mr Burman, 'a not particularly successful middle-aged small-town English teacher' as he describes himself, and focuses on interiority, including an imaginary dialogue he plays in his head between two personas, Comfort and Rigour: Mr Burman knew he swung between two selves, a rigorous, demanding aesthete-moralist, quick to fault imperfections wherever he saw them, and a comfortable bourgeois liberal, resigned to compromise, hoping for the best, trying to see the other point of view.

But dialogue with his daughter Leila - that's rather harder:

'If I listen to you, said Mr Burman warily, 'and when I think you've finished, I speak, with my response to what you've said, and perhaps bringing in some thoughts of my own, would you mind?'
'That's called talking, said Leila. 'They already invented it.’

However he does, or rather did, find a soul-mate in a brilliant pupil, Raf, cheeky and confident, intellectually brilliant although claiming his curiosity is repressed by his parents, and somewhat troubled (and indeed trouble - he dates both Mr Burman's daughter, younger than him, but also tries and almost succeeds in seducing Mr Burman's wife).

The novel is set over two days and opens, arrestingly, pun intended: The day before he went south to see Raf in prison, Mr Burman came home to find the door of his house on the latch and a grey, scuffed pair of men’s trainers dropped in the hallway.

Raf and Mr Burman had formed a strong bond over their artistic interests, particularly in design and architecture: 'I was flattered that this bright young man took an interest in my rambling thoughts. I suppose we shared a disappointment in the way human endeavour no longer seems able to imbue made things with joy and spirit?’

Their shared disappointing includes the destruction of the town centre, over time, in a bravura passage that provides a fascinating contrast to the real (both outside and inside the world of the novel) WW2 bomb in a South London department store in Frances Spufford's Light Perpetual:

Nobody could say when this bomb had begun to go off, or if it would ever stop exploding; it had been exploding for years. And because there was no sudden thunderclap and flash of light that tore everything down in an instant, and nobody could claim it made their ears ring or had given them concussion, they felt only a sinking of the heart and a sense of war being waged against them by a force that was just out of sight, of having their common wealth taken apart piece by piece while their backs were turned. As the bomb ignited and expanded, the local department store went dark, everyone who worked there disappeared and everything inside it vanished, it filled with dust, chipboard spread over its windows, and eventually the entire building disappeared, with a B&M retail shed stopping the gap, colours already fading. The facades of a butcher's, a jeweller's and a shoe shop were ripped away and a Cash Converters, a Cash Generator and a branch of a pawnbrokers' chain poked out. A furniture showroom disintegrated and all that was left was a Poundland. A clothes shop crumbled in the incremental blast, leaving nothing behind but a branch of Sports Direct.

But where they part company is their response to this. Mr Burman believes in preservation - he lives in an old house, buys his close from thrift shops. His daughter Leila, perhaps to provoke him, works in the show-home for a development of modern, boxy, homes, the type of dwelling Mr Burman despises.

But Raf - well Raf believes in destruction - indeed he turns down an offer from Cambridge to study English and goes to Imperial, to study structural engineering, before taking up a career in demolition.

The quote that opens my review is Mr Burman talking, he thinks, figuratively about Leila, and how she has been unable to rebuild her life after the death in an accident of her mother, Mr Burman's wife (a charismatic figure who provides the missing heart of the novel for each of the three main characters). But it's a quote Raf takes literally - and, as the novel's blurb tells us - devises a complex plot to destroy St Paul's Cathedral, one that is within hours of succeeding. Which is why Raf is prison, detained without trial on suspiscion of terrorism and involvement in a wider conspiracy - with Mr Burman asked by Raf's lawyer to persuade them it was genuinely Raf acting alone, while the self-centred Mr Burman himself fears being arrested for, if not aiding and abetting, certainly incitement.

Fascinating - and a novel I hope that goes on to prize success.

[Katie Steele · Rating 4 out of 5]

A highly readable and immersive book, which I enjoyed, especially for its portrayal of the little family at its centre, pulled apart by the boy who came among them and led to so much turmoil and disruption. He felt selfish and distracting, but at the same time vulnerable and naive. A novel about miscommunication and missed opportunity. Interesting and makes me want to read more of this author

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whadley Road, the high street, didn’t exactly look like a bomb had hit it, unless it was a different sort of bomb, a gradual bomb exploding at calendar speed. If it was that, Whadley Road had taken a hammering. This was a bomb that shattered and warped and dissolved solid structures and stripped small things of superfluous charm, leaving each object cheaper and meaner and more disposable than before. Nobody could say when this bomb had begun to go off, or if it would ever stop exploding; it had been exploding for years. And because there was no sudden thunderclap and flash of light that tore everything down in an instant, and nobody could claim it made their ears ring or had given them concussion, they felt only a sinking of the heart and a sense of war being waged against them by a force that was just out of sight, of having their common wealth taken apart piece by piece while their backs were turned. As the bomb ignited and expanded, the local department store went dark, everyone who worked there disappeared and everything inside it vanished, it filled with dust, chipboard spread over its windows, and eventually the entire building disappeared, with a B&M retail shed stopping the gap, colours already fading. The facades of a butcher’s, a jeweller’s and a shoe shop were ripped away and a Cash Converters, a Cash Generator and a branch of a pawnbrokers’ chain poked out. A furniture showroom disintegrated and all that was left was a Poundland. A clothes shop crumbled in the incremental blast, leaving nothing behind but a branch of Sports Direct. Crash! A solicitor’s office is blown away and what lies on the site is not rubble, but XFC Chicken and Pizza. Boom! Gambling chains and charity shops peep out from the husk of the neo-Georgian post office, and where the neo-Palladian branch of a bank stood, a different novelty bar selling sweets and fizzy booze to school-leavers opens and closes every year. No one screams when the bomb goes off, no one sits stunned in the fresh debris with blood trickling down their dust-covered crown, no one curses or cries ‘Look out!’ because it’s going off all the time, silently, and if you dial 999 and tell them the high street is being destroyed, they ask what service you require, and you hang up.

 
James Meek in fiction terms is perhaps best known for his “The People’s Act of Love” (2005), set in Revolutionary Russia it was longlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of the Ondaatje Prize – it was a book on which I had mixed views after I read it with my then Book Group on the recommendation of my brother (who had it as outstanding), the cannibalism in the book sufficiently horrifying the group that some ten years later they would refuse to read a book if I said that my brother enjoyed it.  His 2019 black death, climate change analogy (but accidentally Brexit prescient) “In Ordinary Time” (which I have not read) was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.  He won the Orwell Prize in 2015 (when it was not split into Fiction and Non-Fiction) for his “Private Island” on the privatisation of the UK – a book which came out of his main job as a journalist, most recently writing on the ground reportage from both Ukraine and Greenland.
 
Which is to say that Meek is both a versatile and rounded author – and this comes across well in this novel which is both distinctive from his earlier work and imbued with a deep level of thoughtful writing.
 
Meek himself – when the book was optioned – described the themes well saying “This is a book about what gets left behind when someone or something wonderful disappears. Can they be replaced? Loss also demands consideration of how we might have lived differently.”
 
Set over some 24 hours its dominant third-party point of view protagonist is a middle-aged, widowed secondary school English teacher in a North of London now post-industrial town, known throughout the novel by his professional title Mr Burman.  The set up of the book – we find out in its first line - is that he has been asked by the police if he will travel to London to visit an ex-pupil Raf in prison, notoriously detained we quickly work out for an attempt to blow up St Paul’s Cathedral (the police more trying to decide if it was as it appears simply a sole act or part of some wider terrorist conspiracy).
 
As the time progresses Mr Burman looks back across his relationship with Raf – the two bonding early on over literature and then a love of architecture (which ends centring around a mutual – if differently expressed – resentment of modern destruction of older buildings and their replacement with a kind of uniform corporate/capitalist blandness – that process captured in an excellent passage) but the relationship getting conflicted over time as the confident Raf forms a lengthy infatuation with Mr Burman’s wife Ada (a charismatic figure whose innate goodness seems to attract others but intimidate her husband and daughter) and a brief relationship with Mr Burman’s daughter Leila (whose lack of connection to and communication with her father only worsened after the death of Ada in a car accident).
 
Mr Burman enjoys his old house, and wearing retro clothes from thrift shops, while sometimes arguing internally between two different personas – Comfort and Rigour “Mr Burman knew he swung between two selves, a rigorous, demanding aesthete-moralist, quick to fault imperfections wherever he saw them, and a comfortable bourgeois liberal, resigned to compromise, hoping for the best, trying to see the other point of view. He knew, too, that as much as Comfort might hate Rigour, as he was hating him at this moment, he also looked up to him, whereas Rigour’s contempt for Comfort was strong and enduring.”.
 
Leila by contrast enjoys exactly the conformist bland capitalist consumerism her father hates – even taking a job showing clients around a identikit modern housing development built on the ruins of a heritage industrial tower, over which in activist opposition to its destruction Raf and Mr Burman first bonded out of school.
 
Raf turns down a Cambridge literature degree for a structural engineering degree at Imperial and thereafter takes a job in destruction – a job where he controversially demolishes by controlled explosion a Tate Modern lookalike disused power station in Eastern Europe (one well known for its Communist era wall murals), Leila joining him for the trip, forms the novel’s biggest flashback set piece. 
 
Another lengthy present time set piece takes place when Mr Burman looks for Leila after locking himself out and finds her in a TGI Friday which turns out to be have been built on the ruins of an long standing restaurant famous for its old fashioned/classical menu and architecture – the demolition taking place after the death of a parent perceived as demanding by his child.
 
The strands are bought together even more explicitly when Ada dies and all three characters drawn to her are forced in different ways to examine their lives.  Mr Burman’s frustration with Leila’s lapse into even greater taciturnity, apathy and conformity (as he sees it) causes him to explore in a rant with Raf that surely the very loss of something wonderful should cause a positive reaction – ending what he thought was a far flung analogy but one to his horror he now feels Raf acted upon (and which for much of the book he agonises over whether Raf has told the police as part of his defence or even if he should tell them himself)
 

Mr Burman’s eyes were hot and wet. ‘Why does she constrict herself?’ he said. Marching down the track and speaking at the same time made him out of breath. ‘Why does she close herself off? She doesn’t listen to me, she doesn’t care for me, but she won’t move out. It’s hopeless. She wallows in her limitations. She always said she could see how wonderful her mother was, even if she was sure she couldn’t be wonderful herself. Oughtn’t there to be a reckoning with yourself if that wonderful person disappears? You said your Bulgarian friend persuaded you the old power station you blew up was something wonderful. What if you demolished something a lot of people think is wonderful? What if you blew up Notre Dame, or the Taj Mahal, or St Paul’s Cathedral? Wouldn’t people ask themselves whether it could be made again? Mightn’t they feel a duty to work harder, think more deeply, to make good the loss?’

 
 
As I mentioned this is a very cerebral novel but also one full of empathy – as the publisher said at the time of optioning it (in a rather brilliant quote) it looks at the “architecture of the human heart”.  Although that clever link perhaps itself gets to the novel’s only weakness – it is perhaps a little too clever in the way in which plot and (particularly the set pieces), characters and even dialogue are entirely (to an extent that is slightly artificial) fitted to the overarching theme of the novel.
 
Nevertheless, recommended.
 
My thanks to Canongate for an ARC via NetGalley
 

[Jamad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Your Life Without Me follows Mr Burnam — always “Mr Burnam,” never anything more familiar — as he navigates a contemporary English town that feels quietly, steadily unravelling. The novel traces his work, his marriage, and his interior life, which is unusually crowded: he is accompanied by two persistent inner voices, Comfort and Rigour. Comfort tries to see the best in people and situations; Rigour is sharp, critical, and quick to fault. Between them, they form a running commentary on Mr Burnam’s choices and the state of the world around him.

We never learn his first name. He remains “Mr Burnam” throughout, which keeps him — and us — at a slight distance. That feels deliberate. He becomes less an individual and more a vantage point from which Meek surveys a certain strain of middle-class English anxiety: civic decline, moral compromise, marital drift, the small humiliations of modern life.

The sharpest writing comes in the set pieces describing the town itself. This passage, on the slow erosion of the high street, is particularly strong:

Whadley Road, the high street, didn’t exactly look like a bomb had hit it, unless it was a different sort of bomb, a gradual bomb exploding at calendar speed. If it was that, Whadley Road had taken a hammering. This was a bomb that shattered and warped and dissolved solid structures and stripped small things of superfluous charm, leaving each object cheaper and meaner and more disposable than before. Nobody could say when this bomb had begun to go off, or if it would ever stop exploding; it had been exploding for years. And because there was no sudden thunderclap and flash of light that tore everything down in an instant, and nobody could claim it made their ears ring or had given them concussion, they felt only a sinking of the heart and a sense of war being waged against them by a force that was just out of sight, of having their common wealth taken apart piece by piece while their backs were turned. As the bomb ignited and expanded, the local department store went dark, everyone who worked there disappeared and everything inside it vanished, it filled with dust, chipboard spread over its windows, and eventually the entire building disappeared, with a B&M retail shed stopping the gap, colours already fading.
The facades of a butcher’s, a jeweller’s and a shoe shop were ripped away and a Cash Converters, a Cash Generator and a branch of a pawnbrokers’ chain poked out. A furniture showroom disintegrated and all that was left was a Poundland.
A clothes shop crumbled in the incremental blast, leaving nothing behind but a branch of Sports Direct. Crash! A solicitor’s office is blown away and what lies on the site is not rubble, but XFC Chicken and Pizza. Boom! Gambling chains and charity shops peep out from the husk of the neo-Georgian post office, and where the neo-Palladian branch of a bank stood, a different novelty bar selling sweets and fizzy booze to school-leavers opens and closes every year. No one screams when the bomb goes off, no one sits stunned in the fresh debris with blood trickling down their dust-covered crown, no one curses or cries ‘Look out!’ because it’s going off all the time, silently, and if you dial 999 and tell them the high street is being destroyed, they ask what service you require, and you hang up.

It captures that slow, grinding sense of loss very well.

For me, the novel was thoughtful and often perceptive, but it remained slightly airless. The device of Comfort and Rigour is clever and sometimes amusing, yet it also reinforces the sense of remove created by “Mr Burnam.” I admired it more than I felt it.

A solid, intelligent read, though one that kept me at arm’s length.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

[A.J. Sefton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a story about loss and the effects it has on the future. It is both personal (losing a spouse) and historical, particularly with reference to architecture and grand buildings.

The book centres around three people and their relationship with a woman who unexpectedly died. There is her husband, known throughout as Mr Burnam, perhaps in reference to his job as an English teacher, their adult daughter and a former pupil of Mr Burnam who briefly dates the daughter and who was infatuated with Burnam's wife. All the relationships have an unsettling and secretive aspect, except for the woman who died, who is seen as vibrant, popular and attractive and is the person who kept them all together.

Mainly told from Mr Burnam's perspective in the third person, his tale is reflecting on his time with his wife, the awkward and mostly silent relationship with his daughter and the intellectual debates with his brilliant former student. These conversations cover the main theme of the book: new versus old, history versus modernity, and should revered majestic buildings be kept or replaced by something better, Saint Paul's Cathedral for example. And How much of the past should we carry with us?

For quite a while I wondered what this book was about; the plot taking a while to uncover its purpose. But when it did, it was a revelation and gave me something to think about that I had never considered before. Now I see it everywhere and it reminds me of a vicar friend who loves her church but sees its many faults and impracticalities and knows how it can be improved - but no one wants to change a building that it hundreds of years old and is the heart of the community.

The writing is generally very good, with imaginative descriptions of the northern English town where Mr Burnam lives particularly detailed and the discussions about architecture are a joy to read. However, there are some rather unwieldy overlong emails that serve as information dumps towards the end of the book, and the former pupil doesn't really appear as a credible character at times. Then again, he contrasts well with the mundane world around him.

Definitely a catalysing read that has left me thinking about it for days afterwards and probably for years to come. Sign of a brilliant writer I would say.​

[Books By Your Bedside · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first James Meek book and so I had no expectations coming into it.

I am someone who loves short chapters, which is where this falls short. It doesn't have chapters as such, instead just very long sections. That's not a negative on the book as such, more a personal preference, but I struggled with that aspect.

I couldn't stand Leila. My heart went out to Mr. Burnam. Yes he could be a bit of a wet weekend at times but he was trying; he'd been through a lot and he just wanted to regain some sort of relationship with his daughter, but Leila was so shut off and rude that I didn't like reading about her.

We never find out Mr Burnam's first name, and it gives him a bit of distance. It's quite impersonal, and so whilst I did like him as a character, there's not much to get hold of, like he's keeping us at arms length. Raf is a bit of light relief. He's not necessarily a "goodie" or "baddie", but he has his moments. And even if his actions are a bit wrong, he really shines off the page.

It's an interesting look at grief. It's not an overly sad or morose book, and it's not a book about grief as such. But both Mr Burnam and Leila have been bereaved and it was interesting to read the effects of it.

It is set over a short period of time, just a few days, which could have been restricting, and I'm on the fence a bit. It does give us more of the emotional side of the story rather than if it was a full-on action piece, but at the same time, the middle of the book sagged a little.

My main issue was with the language used. It reads as if James was more focussed on ensuring every sentence was a beautiful and poetical as possible, without really thinking about it impacted the whole story and it came to be a bit...poncy.

A lot of other reviews I've seen compared it to this previous work, calling it a "flawed return". Now, having not read any of his others I can't comment on that. But I can agree that it isn't perfect, it is a bit rough around the edges. But overall I found it an interesting and thought-provoking read as opposed to an entertaining and enjoyable one.

[CadmanReads · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a difficult book to review because I can clearly see why some readers will love it. James Meek writes beautifully, and there are passages here that feel quietly perfect, full of sharp observation and tenderness about ordinary life. I would not be surprised if reviews are dotted with quotations, and rightly so.

The novel keeps a small cast of characters and follows its lead closely, and on paper, he felt like someone I should connect with. In practice, I never quite did. I always felt one step removed from him, watching rather than sharing his inner life. I kept wondering if calling him Mr Burman created that distance, or if it was something deeper in how he was drawn. Whatever the reason, the emotional connection just did not land for me, despite the quality of the writing.

That said, this was far from a bad reading experience. When the book is good, it is very good, especially in its reflections on time, memory, and the unnoticed details that shape a life. There were moments where I stopped simply to admire a sentence or an idea.

I suspect this book depends heavily on timing. At another point, knowing the tone and pace, I might love it. A reread is not out of the question, and I would happily try Meek’s other work. This one didn't quite work for me right now, but I can imagine it might in a more contemplative frame of mind.

[Bruno · Rating 3 out of 5]

Een titel als een stationsromannetje of een zondagavondfilm, maar de eerste tien bladzijden van Your Life Without Me, lezen heel beklemmend. Het komt over als een klassieke thriller waarin de spanning vooral komt van de uitgelezen manier waarop de gebeurtenissen worden verteld, en niet zozeer van de gebeurtenissen an sich. Het plot is niet zo heel belangrijk —dat de poging om Saint-Paul’s Cathedral op te blazen mislukt is, weten we al van bij de eerste bladzijden— het is veel meer de metafoor waar die aanslagpoging voor staat; het gezin van Mr Burman.

Het is een verhaal over rouw, maar meer nog over verlies, voor de personages Raf (de mislukte opblazer van de kathedraal), en Mr Burman (we leren nooit zijn voornaam) en zijn dochter Leila, en de afwezige vrouw/moeder Ada.

Het proza is zeer ingehouden en gedetailleerd, en er is zeer veel ruimte voor architectuur (alweer een metafoor). Er zitten veel lagen in dit boek, die allemaal samenkomen, in een einde dat misschien niet zo geweldig is als de lezer had gehoopt.

[Stuart Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story of this novel is unusual, mixing mundane family chemistry (or the lack thereof) with radical architectural philosophy, but the style of the narrative required me to backtrack often.

I judge a novel when I've competed reading it by whether it's one I want to box away or one I want to donate to the neighborhood library box. I'm still trying to decide with this one.

[Themis Drakontis · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Your Life Without Me" by James Meek is a quietly powerful story about family, loss, and the struggles of truly understanding one another. Burman’s journey toward honesty and connection with his daughter feels realistic and moving. The ending, with “Away,” is simple but full of emotional resonance.

[Marcus · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful and thought-provoking book on grief, family dynamics, our built environment... it's hard to nail down because there's so much in there, but the author delicately traverses it all. A distant cousin of The Accidental by Ali Smith. Requires a second read.

[Laura Carpenter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gift from Reuben and I was quite impressed with his choice. I liked the characters, they drew me in. There were some aspects that felt as if they'd been added in to make it more interesting but weren't needed. Very readable though.