Raking The Ashes [Hardcover]

"A remarkable novel...there is something terrifyingly recognizable in each of the characters that will have readers looking deep inside their souls."
-"The Observer"

"From the Trade Paperback edition."

‘A fearless novelist...also a constantly amusing writer. The result is an unsettling, sometimes angry but always engrossing story.’

'...Wonderful...there is something terrifyingly recognisable in each of the characters that will have readers looking deep inside their souls’

‘...The power play and plotting are excruciatingly recognisable...written with humour and barbed wit’

'A fearless novelist . . . also a constantly amusing writer. The result is an unsettling, sometimes angry but always engrossing story.' Independent

‘...admirably acute observations of the trivialities of domestic life’

‘A very admirable and compelling novel’

‘The superlative Fine’s observations on family life get sharper with each book.’

‘Fine is on top form.’

Lovers, colleagues, family - Tilly has always been brilliant at pushing people in and out of her life exactly as it suits her. Then along comes Geoffrey, gentle, compassionate, generous to a fault, with his miserable little children and his manipulative ex-wife.

Tilly's own expertise in the arts of deception and avoidance should be enough to make sure she's always one step ahead of Geoffrey's disastrous, crumbling family. But time and again she finds herself staying, brought down by their cowardly backsliding and their barefaced lies.

How has she managed to stay so long in a relationship she knows perfectly well has to be doomed? More importantly, how can Tilly plan her permanent escape?

Anne Fine's sixth novel is a coruscating comedy written with her trademark wit, insight and grimly dark humour about the ties that bind more savagely than any other - those of families.

Lovers, colleagues, family - Tilly has always been brilliant at pushing people in and out of her life exactly as it suits her. Then along comes Geoffrey, gentle, compassionate, generous to a fault, with his miserable little children and his manipulative ex-wife.

Tilly's own expertise in the arts of deception and avoidance should be enough to make sure she's always one step ahead of Geoffrey's shitty, crumbling family. But time and again she finds herself staying, brought down by their cowardly backsliding and their barefaced lies.

How has she managed to stay so long in a relationship she knows perfectly well has to be doomed? More importantly, how can Tilly plan her permanent escape?

Anne Fine's sixth novel is a coruscating comedy written with her trademark wit, insight and grimly dark humour about the ties that bind more savagely than any other - those of families.

Raking the Ashes is Anne Fine's sixth novel for adults. Her first was the critically acclaimed The Killjoy. Taking the Devil's Advice and Telling Liddy have both been adapted for the radio. She is also a distinguished writer for young people, and has won the Carnegie Medal twice, the Whitbread Children's Award twice, the Guardian Children's Literature Award and a Smarties Prize. An adaptation of her novel Goggle-Eyes has been shown by the BBC, and Twentieth-Century Fox filmed her novel Madame Doubtfire as Mrs Doubtfire, starring Robin Williams. Her books have been translated into twenty-six languages. Between 2001 and 2003 she was the second Children's Laureate. Anne Fine has two grown-up daughters and lives in County Durham.