We’re back with a deliciously sharp-witted book to share with you. Rebecca Wait is best known for her gripping novel Our Fathers which was a Guardian Book of the Year. Now she shares a reading with us from her new bestseller in the making, I’m Sorry You Feel That Way, about dysfunctional family dynamics between twin sisters Alice and Hanna and their mother Celia.  

For Alice and Hanna, saint and sinner, growing up is a trial. There is their mother, who takes a divide and conquer approach to child-rearing, and their father, who takes an absent one. There is the catastrophe that is never spoken of, but which has shaped everything.

As adults, Alice and Hanna must deal with increasingly complicated family tensions, and lives that look dismayingly dissimilar to what they’d intended. They must finally choose their own approach to their dominant mother: submit or burn the house down. And they must decide at last whether life is really anything more than (as Hanna would have it) a tragedy with a few hilarious moments.

‘SO brilliant. A brutally funny and whip-smart novel. It’ll easily be one of my Books of the Year.’ – Hannah Beckerman

‘I’m Sorry You Feel That Way’ is published by Quercus and available now. We recommend buying from your local indie or you can get it from our shop at Bookshop.org.

Podcast produced and edited by Megan Bay Dorman

Programmed by Matt Casbourne

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