by Fiona Mozley
First published 2026
Mary sits with her overwhelming mind, flooded not by forgotten moments but by too many memories that won't stop coming. Some belong to her life, others seem borrowed from nowhere. She tells the story of her youth in York during Tony Blair's years as Prime Minister, when she and her friends threw themselves into protesting the Iraq War. The movement swept them up and spat them out, leaving them changed and scattered. Her friends chose different directions as adults, putting them at odds with each other and with Britain's shifting political landscape. Through it all, Mary wrestles with a fundamental question about her fractured recollections. She wonders who she really is if memories define a person, but her memories can no longer be trusted. The past keeps breaking into her present, real and unreal experiences blending together until she cannot tell them apart.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century, activism
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: York, Britain
Period: Prime Minister
320 pages · Hardcover · John Murray